


Confluence

by wankernumber9



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Post-game Pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4742462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wankernumber9/pseuds/wankernumber9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the storm, Max wakes up in the hospital to discover all is not as it seemed.</p><p>---</p><p>A "what-if" musing on how the story could end. Spoilers through episode 4. Hella Pricefield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Observation

_"Arcadia Bay Police have now called off the search for missing Blackwell student Rachel Amber, as she was found unharmed at a friend's house early this morning. Police would not confirm whether the teen ran away, merely stating that she is now at home with her family."_  
  
Max blinked awake slowly, fighting off the glare of sunlight in a very white room. Her mind drifted awhile before she realized the voice she was hearing was the drone of a TV suspended somewhere above her.  
  
"Can you believe that girl, scaring her parents like that?" came a different, familiar woman's voice off to one side.  
  
"At least she's safe," replied an equally-familiar male voice.  
  
"Mom? Dad?" Max rasped.  
  
"Maxine? Honey?" Vanessa Caulfield appeared at her side in an instant, leaning into view with an alarmed look. "Are you awake? Can you hear me?"  
  
"Yeah," Max replied, inhaling sharply. "What happened?"  
  
Her dad crossed around the bed to stand on the other side. "Take it easy, Max. You've been sick, and you had surgery. What do you remember?"  
  
Max blinked, and realized a haze of white gauze obscured part of her vision. She lifted a hand to reach for her head, only to tangle her fingers clumsily against IV tubes. Very little about the entire situation made sense, especially the news report droning on in the background about that Rachel Amber girl. Her parents exchanged worried glances, but Max ignored them and tried to concentrate.  
  
"The storm..." she murmured. "What happened after the storm?" She jerked in sudden realization. "Where's Chloe?" she demanded.  
  
"Chloe found you during the storm," Vanessa said, as her hands fluttered over her daughter, trying to ward off the building anxiety. "She called for the ambulance. She saved your life."  
  
Ryan stepped away, leaning out of the hospital room to get the attention of some doctor.  
  
Max almost laughed at the bizarre notion of Chloe saving _her_... but why was that funny? She couldn't focus, couldn't understand what had happened, and _really_ couldn't understand why her head hurt so damn much.  
  
Her ears began to ring, drowning out her parents and the young doctor who hurried in to shine a bright light in her eyes, then she mercifully lost consciousness again.

* * *

  
A few hours later, after a thorough check up and a lot of medical jargon involving words like "cerebral aneurysm" and subsequent brain surgery, Max's parents left to let her rest.  
  
Max was dozing when she heard the door open. Chloe peeked in, and grinned when she saw Max smile sleepily back at her.  
  
"Dude! I heard you were awake," Chloe said cheerfully, as she loped into the room. The soft, affectionate look on Max's face made her unaccountably bashful, and she ducked her head in sheer reflex.  
  
"Dude," Max replied. "I heard you saved my ass." For some reason, she was vaguely disappointed that Chloe's hair was its natural blonde color. Weird.  
  
Chloe grimaced. "Yeah, well. That sucked, by the way." She wandered up to the bedside and shoved her hands into her pockets. "You okay?"  
  
"I feel like shit," Max admitted, as she slumped against her pillow.  
  
"Not surprised," Chloe replied. "They leave the important parts behind?" she asked, lifting her chin to indicate the bright white gauze wrapped around Max's skull.  
  
"Hope so," Max said, as she fought off a yawn. She reached out, intending to take Chloe's hand and pull her closer, but stopped herself with an awkward wandering movement.  
  
Chloe blinked but didn't comment, then puffed out a breath. "Gonna have a gnarly scar, though," she said. "Chicks dig scars." She blushed a bit, and rubbed the back of her neck. "Or so I hear."  
  
Max chuckled. "So I've got that going for me, which is nice."  
  
"Dork," Chloe accused gently, before stepping away to grab the reclining seat by the window and drag it closer to the bed. She sprawled across it and kicked her feet up to the bed rail. "You scared the shit outta me, yannow."  
  
"Sorry," Max said, still smiling.  
  
Chloe fidgeted a bit and looked around the room, noting the balloons and flowers piled up across all available surfaces. "But your Blackwell posse really came through. Suppose they're good for something."  
  
"Yeah," Max agreed. She was exhausted, and Chloe must have finally noticed.  
  
"You need to rest, huh? I'll just bail," Chloe said, as she moved to get up.  
  
"No, please," Max murmured, even as her eyes fluttered shut. "Stay. Missed you."  
  
There was no earthly way Chloe was going to ignore a plea like that. "Okay. I could read you highlights from the Arcadia Bay Police blotter," she said, holding up her phone. "Truly exciting shit going down in the 'Bay, and I only did _some_ of it." It seemed gratuitous to mention that she'd read to Max every night since her admittance to the hospital, desperately hoping her voice would reach her friend, wherever she was.  
  
Max smiled faintly and closed her eyes. "Sounds awesome," she said.  
  
"Hell yeah," Chloe agreed, as she settled in to read the latest in the saga of dog fights in the area, all broken up by an unknown vigilante.  
  
Some time later, her voice trailed off as she watched Max sleeping peacefully, feeling an intense wash of relief to see natural rest instead of the induced unconsciousness of a body recovering from trauma. She stood up and stretched muscles badly abused by the terrible hospital furniture, then carefully shuffled the chair back to its usual spot so that Mrs. Caulfield wouldn't notice and ask annoying questions.  
  
Speaking of... Chloe checked the time. The Caulfields were likely to stop by and see their daughter again before visiting hours were over, and that was a pile of awkward Chloe would rather avoid stepping into. Max's parents were nice enough, but they tended to get pushy about their daughter's health and Chloe's own involvement in her illness.  
  
_How did you find her?_  
  
_Why didn't we know she was sick?_  
  
_Why didn't_ you _know she was sick?_  
  
_You don't have to come see her every day, you know._  
  
That last one was especially annoying. She didn't feel like she had to justify her presence, or explain their relationship...  
  
... but shit, it'd be nice to _have_ an explanation for their relationship. Max left, then she came back. Max didn't even bother contacting her, then suddenly she's blowing up Chloe's phone with urgent and increasingly alarming texts. They spend countless hours together like nothing's changed, except for the sharp catch in Chloe's chest that reminds her that _everything's_ changed.  
  
They're friends. Maybe they're something else.  
  
And oh, by the way, some doctors just cut out a fucking chunk of Max's skull, and no one was sure how much of "Max" they took with it.  
  
Chloe stood at Max's bedside and studied her friend for a moment. With a sigh, she reached out to fuss with the edge of the blanket, then ran feather-light fingertips across the border of the white gauze across her friend's forehead. "Gnight, Max," she whispered. "See you tomorrow."  
  
"'Night, Chlo'," Max slurred in return, turning toward Chloe's voice with a smile but not actually waking up.  
  
Chloe closed her eyes to fight back sudden, stupid, ridiculously-fucking-happy tears, then crept out of the room.  
  


* * *

  
The next day, the doctors prodded Max to get up and start moving, insisting that she would heal faster if her body was active. It may have been logical and in her best interests or some other medical bullshit, but Max was pretty sure she wanted to stab the overly-cheery nurse who wandered in once an hour to insist she get up to pee.  
  
In between bouts of dizzy shuffling through the hospital corridors and fending off her overly-solicitous parents, she struggled to recall the events of the past week. There was class, something about Kate Marsh that worried her profoundly (which seemed unfounded, given the balloon and the cheery note her friend had sent her), and Chloe. The vagueness of her memory only compounded her annoyance, feeling like something vitally important dangled just outside of her reach.  
  
Thankfully, when Chloe wandered in to the room that evening carrying an enormous teddy bear, Max's irritation evaporated immediately. "Hi," she said, with a smile that was surprisingly reflexive. "You didn't have to come back. I know you don't like hospitals."  
  
Chloe shrugged. "Dude, no one _likes_ hospitals. But that wasn't going to keep me from seeing you."  
  
"Aww," Max said, blushing a bit. "Is that for me?" she asked, pointing at the teddy bear.  
  
She feigned nonchalance. "What, this? Nah. I just carry stuffed animals around now. It's cool."  
  
Max reached out and wiggled her fingers, so Chloe obligingly handed over the bear.  
  
"His name is Thomas," Chloe announced, very seriously.  
  
Max smooshed her face into Thomas' soft fur, and hugged him tightly. "Of _course_ it is," she agreed. "Thank you."  
  
"I figured he could keep you company when I'm not here," Chloe said, stifling a doofy grin as she watched Max assault the toy with snuggles. "And they wouldn't let me into your dorm room to rescue the Cap'n."  
  
"Now he has a first mate," Max said happily, smiling up at Chloe from behind a fuzzy ear.  
  
Chloe reached to her back pocket, pulling out a folded copy of Blackwell's student newspaper. "Also, this happened," she said, handing the paper to Max with an apprehensive look.  
  
Curious, Max unfolded the paper to read the headline.  
  
**_BLACKWELL STUDENT WINS 'EVERYDAY HEROES' PHOTO CONTEST_**  
**_Winner Maxine Caulfield honored while hospitalized after brain surgery_**  
  
Max blinked. "Holy shit," she said bluntly. She paled and looked up at Chloe in alarm. "But I didn't enter anything," she added, starting to panic. "Did I? Chloe, I don't remember."  
  
"You didn't," Chloe said, rushing to assure her. "I sorta entered for you. Please don't be mad."  
  
Oh. Her anxiety derailed abruptly, leaving resurgent annoyance in its place. "I'm not mad," Max lied with a scowl. "Which photo did you enter?"  
  
"Page 4," Chloe replied.  
  
Max thumbed through the pages until she spotted the scan of a polaroid. She recognized the setting immediately, if not the subject matter. It was the garage at the Price household, where a bird's nest was tucked behind some spare lumber. A figure in the background held a couple boards away from the nest while a proud mama bird stood sentry at the periphery.  
  
A handwritten note on the photo's border dubbed the image "Guardians."  
  
It was a great shot, with a baby bird's oblivious and serene gaze captured in sharp focus, with the other bird and person - Chloe, Max realized with a squint - in the background progressively less distinct. Max immediately loved the picture, even though she couldn't remember taking it.  
  
"You took that just before you got sick," Chloe said, as if reading her confusion. "We heard the birds chirping in the garage, and the lumber had fallen over so the mother couldn't get to the nest."  
  
"So you saved them," Max murmured, still staring hard at the photograph.  
  
Chloe snorted. "I picked up a couple pieces of wood. Nothing special. But it fit the contest, and it's a great shot. Since you were too chickenshit to enter yourself, I thought I'd surprise you."  
  
Max looked up at her, eyebrows raised in escalating disbelief.  
  
"So, surprise?" Chloe said tentatively, raising both hands in mock triumph. "Go Super Max, the famous photographer? Yay?"  
  
"I can't believe you did that," Max said, staring back at the picture. "You can't just..." she trailed off, unsure if she was happy, proud, or really fucking pissed. She crumpled the paper in her fist. "That wasn't _up_ to you, Chloe. It was my picture."  
  
"I know," Chloe said, in a hurry to mollify her friends anger. "Dude, I _know_. It wasn't cool. I'm sorry. I just wanted you to stop doubting yourself. I know you're amazing, and I wanted you to believe that too. For once."  
  
For a moment, Max glared at the crumpled paper in her lap, simmering in frustration. Suddenly she realized her fingers had cramped, fisted deep in Thomas' chest, and immediately forced herself to relax. She wasn't really angry at her friend, just at being sick, at feeling like her own life had happened in her absence, and wondering what else she had missed. She took a deep breath, then looked up to meet Chloe's worried gaze.  
  
"Check with me next time you want to make me famous, okay?" she asked, with a faint, apologetic smile.  
  
All the tension immediately swept out of Chloe's posture, and she heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay," she agreed. "I really am sorry."  
  
"'Sokay," Max said, and gave Thomas another hug. He smelled vaguely of the leather of Chloe's coat, which was inordinately soothing.  
  
For a moment Chloe rocked back and forth on her feet, then went and grabbed her favorite chair to drag it to the bedside. "So how are you doing today?" she asked, as she flung herself across the seat in her customary boneless posture.  
  
Max shrugged, not looking up. "I guess I'm okay. Still trying to figure out what happened this past week."  
  
"You and me both, dude," Chloe said.  
  
"I feel like I'm missing a lot of stuff," Max continued. "My mom said you found me standing in a storm, but she wouldn't tell me any more than that. And I don't have my phone, so I can't check my texts or anything."  
  
For a moment, Chloe considered lying to dodge the hopeful look on Max's face. Then she sighed, and dug into her pocket for her phone. She swiped at it a few times before handing it to Max. "You were sending me weird texts all week," she said.  
  
Max scrolled through their conversation, alarmed and disconcerted by the disjointed fragments on the screen. Something about an eclipse, something about a junkyard, increasing anxiety and disconnect, and the last messages that made her heart race:  
  
**I LOVE YOU**  
  
**ILL ALWAYS LOVE U**  
  
**SEE U AGAIN AT THE LIGHTHOUSE**  
  
The phone dropped from her suddenly numb fingers, and Max looked up to see Chloe desperately avoiding her gaze. "You came to the lighthouse?" Max whispered.  
  
Chloe gave her an exasperated look and jabbed a finger toward the phone. "Of _course_ I did. You were fucking scary right then, Max. What does that even _mean_? I thought you were gonna off yourself or something."  
  
Max barely heard her. "The storm," she said, grasping at the sudden, faint fragment of memory.  
  
"You were standing there, ankle deep in mud, holding out your hand," Chloe said, mimicking the motion with her own arm, then waving it about in agitation. "Blood was _gushing_ out of your nose, and you were muttering about how you 'couldn't save them.'"  
  
She didn't bother mentioning that she'd broken several traffic laws to get there, then sprinted up the hill and nearly broke her own neck fighting past fallen logs and sharp rocks. Nor did she feel the need to describe the desperation she'd felt when Max collapsed in her arms, covered in blood and barely breathing.  
  
And really, it was best not to share how she'd just fucking panicked when the rain killed her phone in the middle of the 911 call, and how she'd screamed herself hoarse into the storm until she saw EMTs climbing the hill.  
  
She certainly didn't bring up the creepy-ass deer she'd seen watching them from just beyond the tree line.  
  
All of a sudden she could feel the weight of Max's gaze, and Chloe wondered just how long she'd been sitting there, looking shell-shocked. She cleared her throat and leaned forward to pluck the phone from where it had fallen on Max's bed. "So yeah. Not the top of my 'been there, gotta do that again' list."  
  
Max could find nothing to say. Nothing to explain what she'd done, or what she'd written. The missing pieces that explained her behavior were starting to take form, like the figures out of focus in her winning photograph, but she still had no words to describe them. She looked at Chloe, willing her friend to understand what she herself could not.  
  
Chloe, for her part, fiddled with her phone before tucking it back in her pocket, and kept her eyes averted. When she could bear the silence no longer, she got up, carefully put her chair back near the window, and stopped to give Max's hand a squeeze before shuffling back out of the room.  
  


* * *

  
Her parents arrived sometime later, made vague, concerned small talk, and left her to her distraction again. When Max finally fell into restless sleep, she dreamt vividly of murder, of time, and a dark room. A bearded man approached her from the shadows holding a syringe.  
  
"No!" Max screamed. She jerked, and nearly panicked at the sensation of the IV in her arm. She fought at the tubes and sensors for a moment before registering familiar hands and a quiet voice trying to talk her down.  
  
"Easy, Max. Chill, okay? You're fine," Chloe soothed. "I've got you." She put her hands to Max's jaw to guide her eyes, trying to get her to focus.  
  
"Chloe?" Max said. "You're here?" She cried out in relief, and threw her arms around her friend. "Oh thank God," she said, shuddering as she buried her nose into the crook of Chloe's neck. "I wasn't sure you'd come back."  
  
"I couldn't sleep," Chloe admitted, as she hugged Max back with gentle pressure. "I'm sorry for walking out earlier. This whole thing is just hella awkward."  
  
Max laughed at the understatement, then pulled back and wiped at the tears in her eyes. "I had this nightmare..."  
  
"It was just a dream," Chloe insisted. "You're okay now."  
  
A nurse strode into the room, looking over the two girls to ensure nothing terrible had triggered the alarm at her station. "Everything okay here, Ms. Caulfield?" she asked, as she took hold of Max's arm to verify the IV was intact.  
  
Max nodded. "I'm fine. Sorry about that."  
  
"No problem," the nurse replied. "Ms. Price, you come by if you need anything, okay?"  
  
"Yes ma'am," Chloe said with a grin.  
  
They waited for the nurse to leave, then Chloe turned her attention back to Max. "Seriously, dude. Are you okay? You scared the shit out of me." _Again_.  
  
Max nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine, now. What time is it, anyway?"  
  
Chloe checked her phone. "Four-thirty."  
  
"In the morning?"  
  
"Yeah," she replied, with a chuckle. "I came back around midnight, but you were already asleep."  
  
"Is it okay for you to be here?"  
  
"Oh yeah. The nurses and I are cool. I may have dropped the word 'partner' a few times when your parents weren't paying attention," Chloe admitted.  
  
Max let her head drop back against the pillow with an exasperated laugh. "God, Chloe. You would."  
  
With a blithe shrug that indicated she'd gotten exactly what she wanted, Chloe leaned back a bit, retreating from Max's personal space. She could see the haunted look in her friend's eyes, and opted to distract her with humor. "I think you should take my name, by the way," she said, grinning.  
  
It was too early in the morning to keep up with Chloe's wit. Max scowled for a moment to decode what she'd just said.  
  
"You know," Chloe said, turning a touch apprehensive. Maybe she'd finally taken the joke too far. "When we get all official with the 'partner' thing?"  
  
Ah. This old routine. They'd been making this joke since they were twelve - _Ha ha, what if we got married? Our parents would freak!_ Unfortunately, the topic was starting to get a little sensitive, especially after the text message revelations earlier in the day. Rather than address that at zero-dark thirty in some godforsaken hospital room while recovering from brain surgery, Max just played along, as usual. "'Max Price?' No way," she replied. "Too many puns. We're hyphenating. Alphabetically."  
  
Relieved, Chloe settled into the comfy banter happily. "Oh, that'll work too. Especially for the kids."  
  
"We're having kids?" Max asked. At least that was a new twist on the old joke. "Your uterus or mine?"  
  
Chloe nodded enthusiastically. "We'll adopt a pile of 'em from like, China or some shit. They'll be the crew for our pirate ship." She'd reached out and taken Max's hand before she was even really conscious of doing so, and bounded forward with the tall tale to cover her sudden nerves. "We'll go plunder... I dunno, Canada? They have stuff, right? We'll go take it."  
  
She kept yammering, spinning the story larger and larger while reveling in the heat of Max's fingers clasped around her own.  
  
"Or maybe we won't have kids. Just a bunch of cats. We'll name them after boy bands. Little 'One Direction Fluffy Britches the Third.'"  
  
Chloe was aware that Max wasn't holding up her end of the banter bargain, but she felt like she'd gone too far to back away from the truth she'd buried in piratical fancy. So maybe _this_ was the moment she could admit she wasn't really kidding about wanting to spend some non-platonic together. Maybe this was the time to talk about those text messages. Maybe this time she could just admit...  
  
"Kidding," she said despite herself, with an easy smile that belied her own frustration.  
  
Naturally, Max had stopped listening a while back. She was looking at the skin of Chloe's wrist under her fingertips, then suddenly she lunged forward and yanked at Chloe's sleeve.  
  
"Whoa! What the hell?!" Chloe demanded, batting away her friend's insistent hands, but not before Max caught glimpse of what she'd been looking for.  
  
The blue butterfly tattoo on Chloe's forearm was familiar for too many reasons, and Max had to swallow back a sudden rush of bile. "When did you get this?" Max demanded.  
  
"A year ago, on my 18th birthday," Chloe answered. "Dude, I told you that already."  
  
It hit her then, fittingly like a bolt from the blue: a bathroom, a butterfly, a bullet.  
  
Max reeled, clinging to Chloe's hand. "Oh my God," Max breathed. "I remember..." She exhaled a faintly hysterical laugh. "You won't believe me."  
  
Chloe leaned in, reaching for her friend's shoulder and keeping Max's gaze locked on her own. "Tell me, Max."  
  
"I was somewhere else. A different place. You were different, and you... died." Max choked on a weak sob. "I got drugged and kidnapped..."  
  
It was all Chloe could do not to climb up onto the bed and wrap Max up in her arms. "You're okay, Max. You're safe now."  
  
"I know it doesn't make any sense, Chloe. I know it's fucked and I sound like I'm crazy. But I swear to you..."  
  
She trailed off when Chloe dug into her pocket and produced a photograph.  
  
It was a polaroid shot of another Chloe, with a vibrant tattoo and bright blue hair, lying across the hood of a junked car and holding a gun.


	2. Hypothesis

Max felt her stomach drop. She stared at the image, then at the far-different Chloe holding it, who seemed remarkably calm.  
  
"After the ambulance took you away, I grabbed your bag and tried to save it from the rain," Chloe explained. "Your journal got soaked, and the ink ran a lot. But most of your pictures are still okay." She flipped the photo around to look at it, and pursed her lips. "There are a lot of her." She may have sounded a little sad.  
  
_Of you_ , Max thought. _It's always been you_.  
  
"It was real," she said aloud, on a shaky exhale.  
  
"Well, yeah," Chloe agreed amiably. "You're not that good at Photoshop."  
  
Max could only blink at her.  
  
Chloe winced when she realized how she'd just sounded. "I mean: 'You're a brilliant artist and I admire your craft?'" She sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. "Sorry, dude. I have no idea how to deal with this. I don't even know if you _can_ Photoshop a polaroid."  
  
"But you believe me," Max said. It wasn't a question.  
  
She nodded agreement, but was having trouble meeting Max's eyes. "Yeah. I mean, I don't know how or why, but _something_ happened to you this week, and it wasn't just..." She trailed off as she pointed to her own head in vague reference to Max's surgery. She held the photo up once more. "Do you remember this?"  
  
It was a perfectly logical question, but Max wasn't sure how to answer it. "I don't know," she said honestly. She had an impression of a sun-soaked junkyard, and a spark of anxiety in her gut related to Chloe doing stupid, dangerous things.  
  
Then in a flash, the almost-memory turned dark and threatening, with dirt and rot and _oh God that smell_ and sick anger lurking in the shadows...  
  
She shuddered and shook off the sudden unease, then scowled at the hollow sensation it left behind.  
  
Chloe was watching her face, but couldn't read the shift in emotion. She twirled the polaroid in her fingers. "She's probably one you wanted to meet at the lighthouse, huh?"  
  
"She's _you_ ," Max insisted, recognizing the shy note of insecurity in Chloe's voice. She reached out to grab her Chloe's hand, knocking the photograph from her grasp. "It's always me, and it's always you, and _we_ are the only thing that makes any sense to me right now."  
  
That was enough to assuage her anxiety for the time being. Chloe picked up the photo and tucked it away in her pocket. "Then we'll find out what's going on," she announced decisively. "Together." She could see Max's eyes blinking at her more and more slowly. "After you get some sleep," she added.  
  
Max sighed pressed her fingertips to her forehead in frustration. "I don't wanna sleep," she said with a pout. "Everything's all fucked up..."  
  
"But it'll wait," Chloe replied. She stood up to lean over and tuck Max in, making sure Thomas the bear was secured at her side. "You gotta rest, Max." She smiled when the other girl grumbled a bit more, and reached up to smooth Max's hair away from the bandage. Her hand lingered at Max's cheek, tender against her skin.  
  
Max looked up at her with bright, wide eyes, very aware of the charge in the air between them. "Will you be here later?" she asked.  
  
"Yeah," Chloe promised quietly. She let her thumb stroke against Max's cheekbone. "I'll be here."  
  
Max closed her eyes and leaned into the caress. "'Kay," she said, then took a deep breath and relaxed.

* * *

 

Once Max had fallen asleep, Chloe retreated, ending up near the window in the far corner of the room to watch dawn brighten the sky outside. She was tempted to pull the photo out of her pocket again, as if it would yield answers on pain of being glared at really hard. She scratched idly at the tattoo on her arm and tried to sift through the available facts.  
  
She had told Max the truth; her journal was almost completely illegible, except for some oddball drawings and stickers. Most of the photos were intact, but didn't provide a lot context - lots of birds and squirrels and a deer here and there. Then there were the ones of someone who looked a hell of a lot like Chloe.  
  
She wasn't a photography nerd, but she could tell when a photo was taken with care for the subject. Max clearly had an affinity for this blue-haired iteration of Chloe. The lighting and framing were flattering, and Chloe herself looked like a troubled badass, even when photobombing Max while they lay in bed together.  
  
Her insides twisted with a weird jealousy, and she heaved a sigh. Despite Max's protestations, Chloe was very aware that she was not the girl in those photos. She was also definitely not the one to whom Max had directed those text messages.  
  
A quiet knock on the door drew her attention, and she turned to see a man in an EMT uniform peer into the room. "Ah, hey there," he said in a low voice when he spotted Chloe. "My name's David Madsen. I'm the paramedic who responded..."  
  
"I remember," Chloe said, cutting him off. He was the one who had pried Max's limp body from her arms, assuring her he'd do all he could. Seeing him again set her on edge, and she instinctively moved to put herself between him and Max.  
  
"Just got off shift, and I heard your friend was recovering," he explained, stepping fully into the room. "Doc said she's gonna be okay." He looked past Chloe toward Max's sleeping form, and nodded with satisfaction. "Not all my calls have a happy ending. I'm glad she's one of them."  
  
"Yeah," Chloe replied, summoning all form of social grace she had left at the end of a long, complicated night. "Thanks for helping her."  
  
He tipped his hat in a salute with a small smile. "Happy to serve," he said. With that, he turned on his heel to leave. "Wish you kids would stay away from the lighthouse, though. Bad stuff happens up there," he muttered, as he shut the door behind him.  
  
She started in alarm, then charged out into the hall after him to grab him by the sleeve. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "What happens at the lighthouse?"  
  
He held up his hands and backed away half a step. "Easy now. I just meant a lot of kids party up there and end up doing stupid things."  
  
Chloe bristled. "Max wasn't 'partying,'" she said with a growl.  
  
The look on his face said he didn't quite believe that, but he didn't press the point. "All I know is, we get called up to that place more often than we should," he said. "Cops'll tell you the same."  
  
She glowered, with no reason to argue.  
  
"Take care of your friend, Chloe," he said gently, with a pat on her shoulder. "She needs all the help she can get." With that, he walked off and disappeared into the bustle of the hospital's morning shift.

* * *

The hospital wifi really sucked.  
  
Chloe rubbed her eyes as words on her laptop screen started blurring together. Searching for "Arcadia Bay Lighthouse" turned up a lot of touristy garbage. Adding terms like "strange occurrences" and "emergency response" made things a little more interesting, and she bookmarked a few pages before shutting her laptop again. Chloe looked back across the room, where Max was somehow managing to sleep despite all the beeps and whirs of the machinery around her.  
  
"What the hell happened to you, dude?" she asked under her breath. With one last fond look, she crossed her arms and settled in to get some rest herself.

* * *

 

They both awoke hours later to a nurse pushing a wheelchair into the room, declaring that Max needed to get some fresh air while the fair October weather held out.  
  
"I'm sure your partner here wouldn't mind taking you for a spin," the nurse said in a stern tone that certainly didn't sound like a polite suggestion.  
  
Max eyed the wheelchair with trepidation, while Chloe hauled herself out of her chair and yawned. "Yeah, 'partner.' Let's roll," she said with a sly grin. She teamed up with the nurse to get Max upright and comfortable in the seat.  
  
After Max successfully talked Chloe out of racing the other wheelchair-bound patients, popping wheelies in the hallway, and trying to drift around the corners of the ramps, they ended up outside in the hospital courtyard. Chloe parked the chair next to a bench in the shade of a tree that was just starting to burn with autumn colors, and Max found her fingers twitching, wishing for her camera.  
  
Chloe squinted into the sky and nodded, as if acknowledging that even she found the weather acceptable. She straddled the bench and leaned forward, looking expectantly at Max. "So?"  
  
"So?" Max repeated.  
  
"Evil alternate universe," Chloe prompted, waving her hands. "Spill!"  
  
Max laughed and shook her head. "I don't know that that's what it was." While Chloe waited, she took mental stock of what she could recall. "Animals kept dying," she said, for lack of a better place to start. "Like, dozens of birds just dead on the sidewalk, and these huge whales beaching themselves in the bay."  
  
"What?!" Chloe crowed in disbelief. "What the fuck?"  
  
"No idea," Max replied with a shrug. Her eyes narrowed as she thought harder. "And the weather was weird, too. Snow, and a random eclipse. At one point there were two moons in the sky."  
  
Chloe's eyebrows scaled her forehead. "Dude, that doesn't even make sense."  
  
"Right?" Max asked. "School was freaky, too. There was this club for the popular kids, and I think I was in it, for a while." She pointedly ignored Chloe's answering snort. "And my photography teacher was creepy as fuck."  
  
"Ms. Grant?" Chloe asked in disbelief. "The hippie with the identity disorder who can't figure out if cameras are for art or surveillance?"  
  
"No, not Ms. Grant," Max said vaguely, unable to articulate the queasy feeling she got when thinking about that class. She pressed her hand to her belly and willed the sensation away.  
  
"So, that leaves me," Chloe concluded, as she watched her friend in concern. "Or at least, my shiny variant in the photo. What was her deal?"  
  
Max's face fell immediately, her heart clenching at the distinct sense of helpless loss. "She died," she said. She stared into vacant air, tasting the grief of that thought fresh on her tongue as she recalled the sensation of falling, crashing to the dirt, reaching out, then nothing. "I couldn't protect her."  
  
Chloe scowled. "Why did she need protection?"  
  
At that, Max exhaled a faint, incredulous laugh. "Because she did the _stupidest_ shit," she said, with an inexplicably fond smile.  
  
All of a sudden she was regretting her suggested wheelchair antics. Chloe coughed. "What else?"  
  
Frustrated and unable to bring any specific recollections to the surface, Max just shook her head. "She was angry a lot. And sad a lot." She closed her eyes. "And beautiful," she added, as an afterthought.  
  
Chloe flinched. "So, totally _not_ the well-adjusted and risk-averse soul before you. She's the one who gets the goatee after the transporter accident." She forced a grin, but really should have guessed that Max would notice.  
  
Max cocked her head and leaned closer, reaching for her friend's hand. "Chloe, I know she's not real. I know who I'm talking to."  
  
"Yeah, sure," Chloe agreed, too easily. "Sucks for her."  
  
She waited, seeing the conflict brewing behind Chloe's eyes, and knowing it would come out if she was patient. She stroked her fingers along Chloe's in an idle pattern, hoping it would serve as some kind of encouragement.  
  
Chloe made a few different efforts to speak, and thought better of each one. After several minutes, when a cool breeze had kicked up and made Max shiver, the words finally found voice.  
  
"You loved her," Chloe murmured, almost inaudibly. "In those texts. You told her you loved her." She swiped at her eyes in annoyance, not wanting to shed a tear in jealousy of a dead girl who didn't even fucking exist. "Fuck, this is so stupid," she complained.  
  
This was actually a moment Max had imagined countless times before, when feelings and admissions finally came bubbling to the surface and they could just say what they'd both known for so long. She'd never imagined it while sitting in a wheelchair with a hole in her damn skull, questioning everything she knew about reality, with the rushing sensation in her head that probably wasn't healthy for someone recovering from brain surgery, but it was probably still perfect.  
  
Max regarded her best friend, seeing both the girl she'd had always known and the woman Chloe had turned into. In her mind's eye, she could see another Chloe, one who painted her hair and skin in bright colors to warn the world to keep its distance, but who was no less vulnerable. In the far distance was yet a different Chloe, physically fragile and at peace. She loved each one the same, because they were the same.  
  
The realization was stunning in its simplicity, and Max could feel the world slow to a quietly perfect lull around them. What had been a furtive, closely-held secret for so long was now simply... truth.  
  
"I don't remember writing those messages, or why I did," she admitted. She was prepared for the moment when Chloe tried to bolt, and tightened her grip on her friend's hand to hold her still. "But Chloe... I have _always_ loved you."  
  
She heard Chloe's sudden inhalation, but otherwise the courtyard had gone oddly silent, only punctuated by the occasional chirp of a passing bird. Chloe kept her head down, and Max could see a tremor rattle across her limbs.  
  
"C'mon," Max murmured with an affectionate look. She tugged a bit on Chloe's hand. "You had to know that. This isn't actually some big revelation."  
  
Despite herself, Chloe exhaled a laugh. "Maybe," she said, in a very small voice, shaped by a very small smile.  
  
"And I know you love me back," Max declared, with utter certainty.  
  
Chloe finally looked up at her, with an expression Max dearly hoped she would remember for the rest of her life. Devoid of skepticism or anger or doubt, just an open, trusting smile and the sheen of happy tears in her eyes. "Maybe," Chloe said.  
  
"Pfft. _Totally_ ," Max corrected, feeling joy bubble up from somewhere deep inside, as Chloe's face loomed closer, with an intense expression that looked for all the world like an impending kiss...  
  
... until her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Chloe flinched away. With a curse she retrieved the phone and held it up so Max could see the caller ID: _Max's Mom_.  
  
She took a deep breath, then answered. "Hey, Mrs. Caulfield," she said, smiling through gritted teeth for Max's benefit. "Yeah, Max is with me. One of the nurses said we should... Yeah, I'll bring her back." With a sigh and a shake of her head, Chloe ended the call and put her phone away. "Cockblocked by your mom. So harsh."  
  
Max chuckled. "Dare you to kiss me anyway."  
  
"What are you, twelve?" Chloe scoffed. "Also, holy _shit_ does your mom hate my guts."  
  
"Double dare you," Max replied, unfazed and ignoring the additional commentary.  
  
"Dude." Chloe dropped her hands to the arms of the wheelchair and leaned down, well into Max's personal space. A double dare was serious business.  
  
Max reached up, looped an arm around Chloe's neck, and pulled her forward, off-balance, until they collided nose-first. And so their first kiss was spent mostly just laughing against each other's lips - awkward, goofy, and absolutely perfect.

* * *

Chloe managed to keep grinning right until she pushed Max back into her hospital room, where her parents waited.  
  
" _There_ you are," Vanessa snapped. "I don't know what manner of mischief you thought you were getting into..."  
  
Chloe's eyebrows shot up as she helped Max out of the chair and eased her to sit at the edge of her bed. _Manner of mischief?_ Who the fuck said stuff like that?  
  
"... but you will not endanger Maxine's health in such a reckless, irresponsible..."  
  
"Mom, the nurse said I should get some fresh air," Max interrupted. "Chloe was nice enough to keep me company. And I'm _fine_ , by the way."  
  
"Thank you for taking such good care of Max," Ryan interjected, smiling warmly at Chloe and putting a placating hand on his wife's shoulder before she could object. "You're looking better every day, sweetheart."  
  
"Yes, well," Vanessa said primly. "The doctor said they plan to release you tomorrow, and then we'll take you home so you can heal properly."  
  
Chloe felt her heart seize up, and she took a reeling step away. She'd seen this coming, but that didn't mean she was ready for it. Max was leaving, again. In a heartbeat she was fourteen years old, she'd just lost her dad, and her best friend was standing on her curb saying goodbye. Again. Shit.  
  
Max blinked, missing most of Chloe's distress in favor of her own. "But what about school?"  
  
"Blackwell will be there when you've recovered, dear. You're coming home."  
  
I _am_ home, Max thought. She looked to Chloe, who had rather predictably reverted to Plan A - detached asshole mode - while she avoided eye contact with everyone in the room. Max could see the situation start to unravel, and desperately wished she could somehow stop time to fix it.  
  
"Yeah, so. Catch ya later," Chloe muttered, as she turned on her heel to leave.  
  
Max lunged forward and reached out, scared and desperate, just like she had in a bathroom in another life. "No!" she cried, as she grabbed hold of Chloe's hand. "Don't go."  
  
Chloe stopped walking, but didn't turn around. She hung her head while her jaw worked in familiar anger and grief, while she tried not to cry in front of Max's goddamned parents.  
  
It was a pivot point for them both, one weighted by the swirl of entirely confusing emotional revelations of the past week, and by the anguish of five years' separation.  
  
Max could feel the fragile balance of the moment, and tugged a bit on Chloe's arm to pull it in her favor. "I'm staying," Max said, looking directly at Chloe's face in profile, promising. Then she turned to her parents. "Mom, Dad, I'm staying here. With Chloe."  
  
"Maxine, you have been very ill, and you need to recover _at home_ ," Vanessa replied with distinct parental impatience, trailing off when her husband coughed discreetly behind her. She looked back at him in question and Ryan only shook his head, watching the interplay between his daughter and the girl she'd always known.  
  
Max was staring at Chloe, still clinging to her wrist, her expression wide open and practically begging for Chloe to turn around.  
  
After a long moment, Chloe sighed, giving Max a sidelong glance as the tension dropped from her shoulders. "Max could stay with me," she muttered. She finally gave in and turned around, and looked down in surprise at the way Max's fingers had neatly tangled in her own. "Joy- _Mom_ would be happy to have her. We'll make sure she gets whatever doctor stuff she needs," she concluded with a vague shrug.  
  
"Out of the question," Vanessa declared immediately.  
  
"We'll discuss it," Ryan said at the same time. Husband and wife shared a meaningful look laden with unspoken communication, which went unnoticed as Chloe and Max shared an entirely similar look. "Max, you get some rest, okay?" he continued. "We'll come check on you later."  
  
"Okay, Dad," Max said with a distracted smile, unable to tear her eyes away from Chloe as her dad escorted her mom from the room.  
  
It took Chloe a moment to realize they were alone again. She looked at their intertwined fingers with a frown. "Dude," she said. It was somehow a statement, question, and accusation all at once. "Did you just come out to your parents?"  
  
Max laughed, slid carefully off the side of the bed, and launched herself at Chloe for a hug.

* * *

A couple hours later, while Max napped off the excitement of the morning and Chloe obediently and quite mushily held her hand, Joyce Price leaned into the hospital room, and gave her daughter a bemused look. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?" she asked dryly. She stepped in and closed the door quietly behind her.  
  
Chloe put her free hand to her face to hide the flush on her cheeks. "Wasn't my idea," she whispered.  
  
"Vanessa and Ryan came by Two Whales," Joyce said with a smile. She shrugged out of her rain coat and folded it over her arm. "They seemed to think there had been some sort of 'development' between our daughters."  
  
This was hell. Chloe was certain of it. She put her head down on the rail along the side of the bed and settled in to ride out the well-deserved onslaught of her mother's teasing.  
  
"I told them I wasn't sure what they were talking about, since as far as I knew, you two have been joined at the hip since before puberty. But I hadn't seen any rainbow flags flying outside the house recently..."  
  
" _Mom_ ," Chloe muttered in horror.  
  
"Don't make fun of her," Max said, rousing from sleep enough to speak up for her friend.  
  
Joyce stepped up to the bed and reached out to ruffle Max's hair affectionately, steering clear of the bright white bandage.. "Always defending my Chloe," she said, smiling. "You doin' okay, Max?"  
  
"Yeah," Max replied. "I'm okay. Chloe's been taking care of me."  
  
"Not for long, because I _will_ be dying of fucking embarrassment, here," Chloe said, still trying to melt into the floor, yet still keeping determined hold of Max's hand.  
  
Joyce tutted at the language. "Anyway, I told your parents that you will always be welcome in our home," she said. "You're family, Max. Never doubt that."  
  
"I won't," Max agreed with a grateful smile. "Thank you, Joyce."  
  
"Any time, young lady." She looked at them both fondly, then leaned across the bed to poke her daughter in the head. "You do right by your girl, ya hear? Now, I spotted a cute paramedic out in the parking lot, so I'm gonna say hello."  
  
" _Oh my God_ ," Chloe exhaled.  
  
"Can't keep all the sugar for yourself," Joyce chided, with a wink to Max. She laughed lightly and excused herself to head home and prepare for their new houseguest.  
  
"She's so awesome," Max announced in a sleepy slur. "Do you think she'll make me pancakes?"  
  
At that, Chloe lifted her head from the bed rail, and gave Max a wry look. "Considering you've kept me from a life of crime, I think she'll stuff you full of breakfast food until you beg for mercy."  
  
Max blinked. "I did that? How did I do that?"  
  
It was an admission Chloe hadn't originally intended to make. She canted her head to one side and made a face. "Eh. I was pretty screwed up, after my dad died. You know?"  
  
"I know," Max replied. She squeezed Chloe's hand in sympathy.  
  
"But you sent me that postcard from Seattle, and said you'd come back and see me sometime. Thinking about you, and how disappointed you'd be if you came back and I was an asshole... That kept me from doing anything too stupid." She blushed a bit. "I mighta had a crush on you, back then. Totally different than now, by the way."  
  
"Chloe," Max whispered.  
  
"You've always been good for me," Chloe continued. "And my mom knows it." She lifted Max's hand in her own, and pressed it gently to her face. "And now we're gonna _live_ together. How bitchin' is that?"  
  
"So bitchin'," Max agreed, flexing her fingers against Chloe's skin and reveling in the soft devotion of her best friend's gaze. Whatever else the storm had wrought, it had put the two of them together, in this place, with this feeling, and Max was sure was floating away.  
  
They both spun around when the door burst open once more, revealing a young woman in a flannel shirt and jeans, who stared between Chloe and Max in a mixture of confusion and horror. She lunged toward Max and crashed right into Chloe, who'd hopped the bed to block her path with outstretched hands. "Whoa, crazy bitch! Step off," Chloe ordered.  
  
Max blinked, realizing she recognized the intruder from the news reports playing on every TV in the hospital. "Rachel?" she guessed aloud.  
  
Rachel Amber stomped a foot in frustration, and looked like she might burst into tears. "What the fuck did you _do_?" she demanded.  
  



	3. Experiment

Rachel sat in the corner of the room, staring at her shoes.

Chloe paced in the small space between Rachel and where Max sat in bed, eyeing this new girl with distrust.

After a stretch of minutes, Max reached out to lay a gentle hand on Chloe's shoulder, stilling the restless movement. Chloe scowled and folded her arms across her chest, never taking her eyes off Rachel or straying out of Max's immediate vicinity.

"What happened to you?" Max asked quietly.

Rachel exhaled a shaky breath and wiped at her eyes. "You don't remember."

"I kinda had brain surgery," Max said with a deprecating smile. It was easier than explaining the vague yet horrific association she had between Rachel's flannel shirt and the dirt from a shallow grave.

"Who the fuck _are_ you?" Chloe demanded, as her patience snapped. From behind her, Max winced, but didn't say anything.

"You don't remember either," Rachel replied weakly. "Of course not." She took a deep breath and pushed herself upright. "My name is Rachel Amber. I was a student at Blackwell Academy."

"The news said you ran away," Max said.

"Because _you_ told me to!" Rachel exclaimed, pointing back at Max. She shook her head in exasperation, tossing her hair. "Shit, I can't believe I came back for answers and you're three steps out of the produce aisle..."

"Hey! Fuck _off_ ," Chloe snarled. She took a step forward, using her height advantage to loom large in Rachel's vision. "You have _no_ idea what she's been through."

"And it figures _you'd_ be all over her the second she came back," Rachel said, mirroring Chloe's venom. "You never got over your little baby gay crush, even after she _ditched_ you."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Chloe growled, trying to cover her alarm over the fact that this Rachel person _really did seem to know what the fuck she was talking about_.

Rachel studied her for a long, tense moment, then slumped, defeated. "No, I guess I don't," she said, quietly. She leaned around Chloe to look back at Max, who was watching her with wide eyes. "Do you at least know what happened to Nathan? Mr. Jefferson? Anything?"

Max shook her head. "No. I'm sorry," she replied, even as the names made her skin crawl.

"Right," Rachel said, with a sigh. "Well, give me your number. I'll text you, and you can call me if you remember anything, okay?"

"I lost my phone," Max said with an apologetic look.

At that, Rachel exhaled a sardonic, fatalist laugh. "Of _course_ you did." She shook her head one last time, and wandered out of the room, but not before giving Chloe one last, long, inscrutable look.

Chloe watched her leave, briefly considered following her to make sure she got the hell away from the hospital, then turned back to Max with a tentative look on her face. "Are you okay? That was really weird."

Max chewed on her lip as her mind raced, trying to process what Rachel had said. "Yeah, that was weird," she agreed after a moment. She looked up when Chloe lifted a hand to rest on her shoulder, and she smiled. "But you going all aggro was pretty hot."

"You _would_ like that," Chloe said, grinning back. "Sorry I got a little worked up." She slid her hand up, letting her fingers curve against Max's neck, and savored the sensation of Max leaning into her touch. She had to pause for a moment to wonder at her own reactions, realizing just how threatened she'd felt by Rachel's presence. None of that made any sense - not that things were prone to making sense lately.

"She got to you," Max murmured, easily reading the confusion and worry in Chloe's eyes.

"Yeah, a bit," Chloe admitted. "She got to you, too." She sat next to Max on the bed, and looked down with a tiny smile when Max's hand found her own. When she looked back up, Max was biting her lip at her in worry.

"We need to know what she knows," Max said.

Chloe leaned in and kissed Max on the forehead. "I'm on it."

* * *

The next day, a flurry of activity and Max's parents accompanied her discharge from the hospital. Her mother fretted nearby while a doctor went over care instructions, and a nurse arranged her follow-up appointments.

While listing general recommendations for quick healing, the doctor ticked off a few last items that Chloe frantically typed into her phone for later reference. When he got to "refrain from sexual activity for two weeks," she snorted, drawing a sharp elbow in the ribs from Max and a positively withering look from Max's mom.

Her parents insisted on driving Max to Chloe's house, and did an almost subtle once-over of the place to make sure it would be an acceptable temporary residence while their daughter recovered. Chloe trailed after them, dutifully answering their questions about the most recent termite check and the last time they'd had the water heater properly inspected, while Max settled on the couch and smiled at Chloe's "I'm trying to be polite to my new girlfriend's parents though I'd really like to strangle them" voice. The house looked almost exactly like it did five years previous, when she'd spent countless hours here with Chloe, playing and daydreaming and wondering about their future. The comfort and nostalgia of the place nearly overwhelmed her.

"Maxine," her mother called, having somehow materialized in the living room at the conclusion of her tour. "Your father and I are going to drive home, but we'll be back next weekend to check on you, okay?"

"Okay, Mom," Max said, as she got up and hugged her. "Thanks so much for coming to look after me. I'm sorry I worried you so much."

"Nonsense," Vanessa replied. "We're just glad you're all right. And we will always be here for you."

"Always," her dad agreed, as he stepped up to give her a gentle hug as well. "You take care and feel better, okay kiddo?"

"I will," Max promised, fighting off tears. She waved as Chloe walked them out, and sat back on the couch. She heard the roar of the car engine a couple minutes later.

"Do you know how many times I had to promise your mom you weren't going to get an exotic disease from the swing set?" Chloe asked when she walked back in, then vaulted the arm of the couch and landed on the cushion next to Max. "And your dad slipped me two hundred bucks and told me he'd hide your mom's phone for a couple days so she doesn't drive us nuts." She froze when she saw Max swipe a tear from her cheek. "Oh, shit. You okay?" she asked in a mild panic. "They are gonna be pissed if I broke you already."

Max smiled and shook her head. "I'm okay. Just a little tired. Think I should nap for a bit."

Chloe ordered her to wait, bolted up the stairs, thumped around and swore loudly for a couple minutes, then reappeared with five different pillows, every blanket in the house, and some sort of appliance precariously perched on the top of the entire pile.

With a laugh, Max stood up to help before Chloe dropped everything. "Oh my Dog, you are such a goof," she declared. "Is that a humidifier?"

"Uh, yeah," Chloe replied. "And the pillows are like, different firmness and shit. Dunno. Figured you could pick and be comfy."

The tears won out in the face of her friend's spazzy kindness, and suddenly Max was sitting on the couch again, covered in mismatched bedding and hiccuping in broken sobs.

Chloe stared at her in alarm for a couple seconds, then bent and put her hands gently against Max's cheeks. "Dude, breathe, okay? You're all right."

The stress of sickness, surgery, her parents, half-remembered fragments of a different life, vividly-remembered desperate grief, and the general confusion that had fogged her brain since she'd woken piled up, crested over some internal barrier, and came pouring out of her in that moment, as she blindly reached for Chloe and clung to her for dear life.

"I love you," Max said in a rough whisper.

"Max," Chloe breathed, holding her friend tightly. "I love _you_. I'll be with you forever, okay?" She leaned back with an apologetic face. "Except for like, right this minute, 'cause Joyce said she'd feed us if I come by and grab food at Two Whales."

Max chuckled, and wiped away the last of her tears. "Okay. Forever after that, though."

"Forever after that," Chloe promised with a grin. "Grab a nap, brain surgery girl. You're gonna need it to keep up with the crazy shit I have planned for tonight." She fluffed a pillow on the couch and eased Max to lie on her side.

She yawned and let Chloe fuss over her, getting the blankets situated. "Let me guess. Cartoons and _Blade Runner_?" she asked.

Chloe actually looked wounded. "Dude, I can be more creative than _that_."

Max only smiled, and fell asleep almost instantly. Chloe sat on the floor next to her and watched her friend breathe for a few minutes, then stood, pressed a gentle kiss to Max's cheek, and bounced out of the house to fetch some grub.

* * *

Chloe parked, hopped out of her truck, kicked the door shut with her heel, and sauntered toward the front door of the Two Whales Diner. It was a beautiful, crisp autumn day, and she couldn't help but enjoy the smell of the sea air.

Which, of course, was sappy bullshit and entirely Max's fault. Why on earth was life so much better just because she was in _love_ , for fuck's sake? She shook her head, embarrassed at the cliched turn her angry, solitary, misunderstood existence had taken, and stomped noisily into the diner.

"Hey, Mom," she called with a wave, as she turned to grab a seat at the bar, then stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted Rachel sitting in a booth. In her booth. _In Max's spot in her booth_. Uncool. She grit her teeth and stepped closer. At least she didn't have to spend a lot of time tracking the mysterious girl down. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

Rachel glared back up at her. "I wanted coffee," she said sullenly. "Just leave me alone, Chloe."

Chloe thumped into the seat across from her. "All right. Why the hell do you act like you know me?"

"I _don't_ know you, okay? I never did."

"Cut the shit and just tell what happened with you and Max," Chloe hissed, leaning closer.

Rachel gave her a defiant look, interrupted by Joyce's arrival with the coffee pot.

"This a friend of yours, Chloe?" Joyce asked with a distracted smile.

The lack of recognition from Chloe's mother practically had physical impact, and Rachel slumped in her seat. "My name's Rachel," she said. "Nice to meet you, Joyce."

"Oh, that's lovely, hon," Joyce replied. Her attention was already halfway across the diner, at the lowlife that was threatening violence over a sub-par plate of beans. "Chloe, I'll have your lunch bagged up in just a minute." She patted Rachel's arm in an idle, meaningless way, and hurried off.

Chloe watched Rachel's face, and for the first time noticed how entirely heartbroken she looked. With a frown, Chloe decided the rush of empathy she felt was probably Max's fault, too. She relaxed a bit, and tried to be a little more friendly. "So you know my mom, too?" she asked.

Stirred from whatever reflection she'd been doing, Rachel dug into her pocket and tossed a couple bills on the table, then stood up. "No," she said with a sigh. "I don't know anything at all. Except your friend Max is really lucky and she doesn't even know it." She reached across the seat to grab her jacket, and when she straightened again, she gasped.

Chloe held up the picture of her alternate self in the junkyard. "So this is familiar?"

Rachel sank back into the booth with shaky legs. "Where did you get that?" she asked. She reached out tentatively, relieved when Chloe handed over the picture.

"Max took it," Chloe replied.

Rachel tore her eyes away from the photo to look back at the girl who was and was not the same in the image she held. _"When?"_

"That's the question," Chloe said with a wry tilt of her head. "You must be from the same place," she added.

Rachel's eyes widened. "There's another place?"

"Well, sure," Chloe said. "Infinite universes. Quantum physics and shit."

"A butterfly flaps its wings in China and it rains in Arcadia Bay," Rachel mused, eyeing the tattoo on Chloe's arm as the other girl flung her limbs wide across the back of the booth.

"Exactly," Chloe crowed. "But the universes must be busted or something, 'cause as you'll notice, that is not me," she concluded, jerking her chin toward the photo in Rachel's hand.

"No, but you're still _you_ ," Rachel replied, with a fond expression.

Her eyebrows lifted in confusion and a touch of alarm, but before Chloe could respond her mother was dropping a huge bag on the table between them, full of carefully-packed containers that promised to sustain a couple hungry teens for at least an afternoon. "You should get this home to your girl while it's still warm," Joyce said. "You know her parents opened a tab here for while she recovers?"

"No shit?!" Chloe asked with a bright grin. "You know what that means, right?"

"Chloe, I keep telling you there is no such thing as 'infinite bacon,'" Joyce replied dryly. She looked back to Rachel. "You want anything else, hon?"

"No, thank you," Rachel said, still clutching a photo of the daughter this woman had never known.

Joyce had already turned her attention back to Chloe. "I'll be working a late shift, then I have a date this evening, so you'll have to look after Max on your own. Can you handle that?"

Chloe eyeballed the pile of food skeptically. "Dunno. There's only like 8000 calories here. We'll probably wither away to nothing," she said with a smirk. "Did you really score a date with that paramedic dude?"

"His name is David," Joyce said. "I think you've already met him. Pretty sure he helped Max out when she got sick."

She couldn't quite hide her reflexive annoyance on the topic of her mother's love life, but she at least managed to shrug in acknowledgement. "Yeah, he's okay." Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe saw Rachel twitch a bit at his name, but she didn't pursue it.

When Joyce left, Chloe stood, gathered the carryout bag, and reached for the photo Rachel was holding. "I gotta go. Max gets cranky when her blood sugar drops. And even crankier when people fuck with her photos, it turns out."

Rachel handed the photo back and peered up at Chloe. "What are we gonna do?"

"Dunno," Chloe said honestly. "Max is really all I care about, so forgive me if your temporal displacement or whatever is less than a red alert right now."

That stung, but Rachel sighed and pulled out her phone. "I assume you have a phone that works?"

"Yeah. My number is..." Chloe was interrupted by the buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw a text from an unfamiliar number that only said, "Rachel's number, txt me." She looked back at Rachel in confusion.

"Lucky guess," Rachel said, as she scooted out of the booth. "And I already know the rule - 'no emoji.' See you 'round, Chloe. Say hey to Max for me."

* * *

Chloe crept back into the house, noting with satisfaction that Max was still asleep. She cracked open a container of pancakes, applied liberal amounts of syrup, and put it on the coffee table in front of Max, then sat down to wait.

Exactly eighteen seconds later, Max blinked her eyes open, and she inhaled the scent of breakfast greedily. "Holy shit, that smells amazing," she whispered, as Chloe handed her a fork and scooted the container closer. They tucked into their respective meals in silence. Chloe had to nudge Max with a foot only a couple times to make sure she didn't fall back to sleep and pitch face-first into her pancakes.

"Soooo gooood," Max crooned, when she sprawled in satisfaction across the couch with the demolished container of food empty on her belly.

"You sure you don't want an extra pint of syrup to chase that down?" Chloe asked with a smirk.

Max appeared to consider the question carefully for a moment. "I don't want to spoil my dinner," she said finally. "Am I right in assuming there are Two Whales burgers and fries in the fridge?"

"The Joyce Price Special," Chloe confirmed. "With extra mustard for your fries because you're the only freak who likes that stuff."

"Awesome," Max replied with a grin. "Now. Don't we have a busy schedule of goofing off to get to?"

Chloe nodded as she gathered the food containers and dug out the TV remote. "Your call on the entertainment for now. I've gotta get some homework done before they throw me out of school."

Max blinked, unsure why that statement surprised her. She knew Chloe was taking classes at the local community college. It's not like Chloe was an bored, aimless, dropout pothead who roamed Arcadia Bay looking for absolutely _anything_ to do with her time and finding trouble more often than not.

Right? Weird.

Late in the evening, after homework and dinner had been dispatched, and Chloe had won a few rounds of Mario Kart, Max had plead "brain surgery" to get out of losing any further. She lay across the couch with her legs tossed across Chloe's, and they settled into their usual comfortable, friendly banter.

"So then the experiment just goes boom, and Warren is covered in white powder," Max said with a laugh. "I haven't seen chemistry go that horribly wrong before. Someone said there was a fireball in third period, though. I'm kinda sad I missed that."

"Dude is totally into you," Chloe concluded, ignoring Max's digression. She had her eyes closed as she leaned against the back of the sofa.

Max blinked. "What? No. Warren's just a friend." Chloe rolled her head to peer at her through one eye before Max sighed. "Yeah, okay, he's got a bit of a crush," she admitted. "Wanna go to Blackwell and feel me up in front of his locker to demonstrate that I'm taken?" she asked, with a spark of hopeful lust.

"Sure," Chloe said easily. "In two weeks. Doctor's orders."

Max released a dramatic groan. "Ugh, really?! I'm pretty sure that guy was just being overly cautious. I don't think he was even a real doctor. Did you ever see his degree?"

With a chuckle, Chloe poked her. "Careful. If you're not good I'll make you watch _Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within_ ," she taunted.

Max grumbled and tugged her blanket up around her chin. "Shut up. I like that movie."

"I know. You'd think they coulda fixed that while they were poking around in your brain," Chloe lamented, and regretted it immediately when she felt Max tense up. "Shit. I'm sorry," she said, but it was too late.

Max sat up and swung her legs off of Chloe's, and sat up at the far end of the couch, out of reach and bereft of her friend's comforting warmth.

"Max," Chloe whispered. "It was a stupid joke. I didn't mean it."

"Yeah, but what else got fucked in my head?" Max asked. "So much weird shit happened that I don't remember. What if that's permanent, and I'm just all broken and screwed up now?"

Chloe was shaking her head before Max even finished talking. "You did some weird stuff, yeah. But you were _sick_. Now you're better, and you haven't done anything weird since." She paused, then reconsidered. "Except for that whole 'being in love with me' thing."

Max rolled her eyes. "Doesn't count. That was a pre-existing condition," she said, not quite willing to be teased out of her worry.

Somehow, through herculean effort, Chloe managed to restrain a shit-eating grin. "That's my point. You're _you_. You're the same Max I knew five years ago, not the sick Max who stood in a rainstorm saying scary shit last week." When Max turned wide, anxious eyes at her, Chloe scooted closer and lifted a gentle hand to touch the bandage across Max's forehead, then trailed her fingertips downward until they stroked across a soft cheek. "Dude, if _anyone_ knows you, it's me, right?" she whispered.

"Yeah," Max conceded in a small voice. She was transfixed by the intensity of Chloe's gaze, especially as the other girl shifted closer.

"And if _anyone_ could tell that something was wrong with you, it'd be me?"

Max nodded. "That's why you found me at the lighthouse."

"Because I _know_ you," Chloe agreed, canting her head to the side and giving Max a slow smile. "Because I love you," she concluded.

It was gravity, or a tidal wave, or some other crazy natural force that pulled Max forward immediately, because not kissing Chloe in that moment would have ended the universe. She felt Chloe's fingers curling against her neck and exhaled a faint groan before surging closer and reaching for purchase in Chloe's clothing.

They turned into the embrace, rearranging limbs and pulling blankets out of the way until Max was prone across the couch and Chloe was arched above her, hands planted on either side of her head as she teased Max's tongue with her own. In payback, Max looped her legs around Chloe's thighs and pulled her downward, groaning deep in her throat when Chloe's warm, soft weight came to rest against her.

Moments later, Chloe broke away and lifted her head, panting as she stared down at Max, who also panted as she stared right back. Max's pupils were blown wide and dark, her cheeks were flushed, her lips were swollen, and Chloe nearly dipped in to kiss her again before getting a hold of herself. "Damn," she breathed.

Max let out a noise of vague agreement, and tilted upward to catch Chloe's lips once more, only to drop her head in disappointment when Chloe bounced away and levered herself up off the couch with a yelp. "Dude, I'm pretty sure the past few minutes were totally _not_ in the interests of your medical care," Chloe babbled. "Strenuous physical activity... blood pressure... I can't believe we just did that."

Max threw her arm across her eyes, willing her heart rate to slow. "He said no 'sexual activity.' He didn't say anything about making out." When Chloe didn't answer, Max lifted her arm to peer at her.

Chloe stood in the middle of the living room, arms spread in disbelief. "Was that somehow not 'sexual' for you? Seriously?!" she said, her voice rising with her consternation.

At that, Max laughed. Arousal turned the sound low and throaty, and she reached out to beckon Chloe back to the couch. She eventually perched on the cushion alongside Max, but not without some coaxing.

"I just really don't want your head to... explode. Or anything," Chloe said.

"You haven't rocked my world _that_ much yet," Max grumbled. She reached out and toyed with the strings hanging out of the frayed tear at the knee of Chloe's jeans, and simmered in her sexual frustration.

"I just got you back, Max. I can't risk hurting you."

"With the astonishing power of Chloe kisses?" Max said sarcastically, before relenting. "Okay, okay. I just had a really good day with you, you know?"

"Yeah, me too," Chloe said, with a warm smile. Her hand came to rest on Max's belly, stroking across the soft pink fabric of her shirt before slipping below the hem as they looked into each other's eyes. Several seconds passed before Chloe seemed to realize that her fingers were sliding across Max's soft skin, and she jerked away as if burned. "I keep doing that. Sorry."

"Doing what?" Max asked with a blink.

"Pawing at you. All of a sudden I'm all grabby."

"'All of a sudden?' Chloe, you've always been super touchy with me. I like it." She grabbed Chloe's hand and shoved it back under the hem of her shirt. Chloe flexed her fingers experimentally, pressing fingertips against sensitized flesh, and Max immediately gasped, arching into the touch.

"Shit, dude," Chloe said in wonder, taking in Max's responsiveness with wide eyes, before leaping away again. "Popcorn!" she declared, as she fled to the kitchen. Max watched her go with yet another groan.

Sexy, solicitous Chloe was so cute. And so very, _very_ frustrating.

* * *

They managed to fall asleep beside each other in Chloe's bed with minimal additional groping, much to Max's disappointment.

Sometime after midnight, a light rain started to fall outside, hitting the window above Max's head. The natural rhythmic power inevitably shaped her dreams, and inevitably lead her back to the storm.

This time she was watching a huge cyclone tear apart Arcadia Bay. Chloe was beside her, but at what cost?

Vague images and words that had little meaning throbbed in her subconscious mind.

**CHLOE WAS HERE**

**RACHEL WAS HERE**

**MAX WAS HERE**

And then it was all crossed out, stained with blood, while an invisible killer laughed.

Max jerked awake with a faint cry, and sat up in the familiar comforting dark of Chloe's room.

Next to her, Chloe stirred, and pried open one eye to look up at her bedmate. "Just a dream, dude," Chloe slurred. She tugged on Max's arm until Max relaxed back against her pillow. "You're okay," Chloe added, pulling Max's blanket into place with sleepy, uncoordinated motions.

When all was said and done, Max lay on her side facing her friend, and Chloe's warm hand was stroking against her cheek.

"I love you," Max whispered, the words sounding stark and scared in her own ears.

"Love _you_ ," Chloe replied, still mostly asleep. "Always have."

Max took a deep breath, savoring that declaration. She couldn't shake the feeling that the storm was still out there, ominous and unavoidable.

It was coming for her, again.


	4. Results

In the morning, Max barely stirred when Chloe pressed a kiss to her temple, promised to be back after class, then tucked Thomas the bear into her spot on the bed. Max dozed in the room's warmth, vaguely aware of the fluttering flag hanging in the window next to her. For the first time in a long time, she felt at ease - relaxed and safe. The effects of the outside world had always been muted to her here in Chloe's room, and it had always felt like "home" in a way her own room never did.

When she did actually wake up, it was because of bacon. Naturally.

She showered and hurried downstairs, smiling reflexively at Joyce's happy humming in the kitchen.

"Good morning, Joyce," Max said, as she bounced around the hallway corner.

"Well hello there, Max," Joyce drawled, as she flipped a spatula into the air and caught it without looking. "Help me make some pancakes?"

"Yes ma'am!" Max agreed eagerly. She looked around for milk and eggs, and set them on the counter. "Did you have a good date last night?"

Joyce gave her a mock scowl as she handed over a spoon. "Why, yes. Yes, I did. David is a lovely man. Now wipe that smirk off your face."

Max laughed, took the spoon, and dutifully set to work on the pancake batter. "What did you two do?"

"We had coffee, then took a walk on the beach," Joyce said, shaking her head in faint disbelief. "I haven't just _talked_ with a man like that for a very, very long time."

"Aw," Max replied. "That sounds really nice."

"It was," Joyce agreed. "Hopefully you and Chloe had a 'nice' evening, too."

Max froze, panicking briefly as she remembered Chloe's body pressing warm and soft against her own. "Uh... Yeah, she took good care of me," she stammered, wondering when her voice had managed to achieve that particular octave. She cleared her throat, and gathered every bit of 18-year-old adult maturity she could manage. "I'm sorry if this is a bit of a surprise, or whatever," Max said hesitantly.

"Oh please," Joyce replied, tilting her head to peer at Max with a familiar _mom who sees all_ expression. "I have known you most your life, Max Caulfield. And I've heard you and my daughter giggle your way through countless sleepovers. Teenagers aren't nearly as sneaky as they think they are." She wagged a finger accusingly. "And don't think I don't know about the little makeout session after you two spilled that bottle of wine."

Max ducked her head and focused on stirring, hoping her furious blush wasn't incredibly obvious.

Joyce relented, and returned her attention to the griddle. "It's been a long time since I've seen Chloe smile like she has these past couple weeks. Not since..." She hesitated, then sighed. "Well, since before William died." She reached up to brush a stray lock of hair out of Max's face. "You have to take care of yourself, you hear? Lord knows you've always made Chloe happy, and that's all a mother wants for her child."

"I will," Max promised immediately. "And I'll take care of her, too. Forever." She replayed her own declaration in her head and couldn't help the fresh wave of heat that rose in her cheeks. Even if she meant every word, it was probably a weird thing to announce to her brand new girlfriend's mother. She looked away and wished, not for the first time, that she could somehow step backwards a few moments in time and say something slightly less awkward.

"I know you will, hon," Joyce said sincerely. She cocked her head when she heard the squeal of brakes in the driveway, and smiled at Max. "Just in time," she declared.

Chloe stepped into the house and dropped her backpack by the door. "Holy shit, I'm starving," she said by way of greeting as she beelined into the kitchen. She grinned at Max, who was still blushing and threatening to collapse into a shy hipster fetal position.

"Language," Joyce scolded automatically, as she herded the two girls to the dining room table and dished out their breakfasts.

With a bump against Max's shoulder, Chloe leaned in to try to decipher the expression on her face. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Max whispered. She rubbed at the burn on her cheeks and turned a genuine smile back at Chloe. "Your mom is just really cool, you know?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to hate her until after college or something," Chloe whispered back. "But yeah, she doesn't suck."

At that, Max chuckled, and dove into the pancakes and bacon that had materialized in front of her.

Joyce sat across from them, grinning at the girls from behind her coffee mug. "You two are so cute," she said, thoroughly enjoying the blush that stained Chloe's cheeks to match Max's.

"Yeah, yeah," Chloe mumbled around a mouthful of breakfast. "How was your _date_?"

"The first of many, I hope," Joyce said, with a decidedly hopeful nod.

Chloe swallowed hard gave her mother a worried look. "I'm not gonna have to call him 'Dad,' am I?"

Joyce snorted. "If it comes to that, we'll think of something."

The notion still struck Chloe as vaguely unsettling. "Step... dude," she offered, with a face that looked like she'd bitten into something sour.

"Don't go gettin' ahead of yourself," Joyce said, as she wagged a finger between Chloe and Max. "Unless you want me to start picking out 'Save the Date' cards for you two."

Max lit up at the idea. "Oh, we could have a double wedding! That'd be so fun! You and Chloe could wear matching dresses."

After a brief moment of abject horror, Chloe erupted into laughter, then promptly choked on a bit of aspirated bacon.

Across the table, Joyce sighed and sipped her coffee as she watched Max fight off absurd giggles and helpfully clap Chloe on the back.

* * *

"You know, I _do_ have homework," Max complained. She looked out the window with a guilty look as Chloe's truck clattered down the access road.

"Seriously? You're not gonna milk the 'brain surgery' excuse as long as you possibly can?" Chloe asked.

Max gave her a sideways look. "I was kind of hoping to actually pass my classes this year," she said dryly.

"Screw that," Chloe replied. "Overrated." She pulled hard on the steering wheel, skidding along a dirt drive to their destination. "We're here!"

Max peered out, unsure of where, exactly, "here" might be. "Tetanus 'R Us?" she guessed aloud, as she slid out of the truck and closed the door.

"American Rust!" Chloe said, with an expansive gesture. "The scene of the crime, or at least of that picture of emo-me. We should look for clues."

Max folded her arms as she took in the junkyard. "It's very... raw and rough," she said, following Chloe into the entrance.

"I kinda like it," Chloe announced. "It's cool."

Max's eyebrows shot up, but she didn't bother arguing. Instead she cast a cautious look around the haphazard piles of discarded stuff and tried to soak in the inherent beauty of decay. Or something.

"Do you hear that?" Chloe asked suddenly, rising to her tiptoes to seek the source of a noise in the distance. Without waiting for an answer, she'd started jogging deeper into the winding paths of junk, ducking a stray dangling car door and skipping out of the way of an ancient washing machine. At the rough cinder block bunker near the train tracks, the sound resolved into a hiss punctuated by an occasional rattle. "Is someone there?" she called. She slowed and squared her shoulders, making sure Max was well behind her.

"Chloe?" called a familiar voice. Rachel Amber stepped out of the makeshift clubhouse holding a can of spray paint. "Hey," she said cautiously. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Chloe replied, instinctively obstinate as she folded her arms. "What the hell are you doing?"

Rachel shrugged. "Nothing. Hey, Max," she said with a lift of her chin as Max approached.

"Hi Rachel," Max answered with a bright smile. "What were you tagging?" When Rachel only blinked at her, Max stepped around Chloe to head into the structure. "Can I see?"

"Yeah, _Rach_ ," Chloe said cheerfully. "Can we see?" She snickered at the barely-audible curse Rachel uttered as they stepped neatly past her.

Inside the ramshackle structure, Max turned in a slow circle, taking in the worn couch that was almost certainly stolen from a Blackwell dorm, and the trashed evidence of parties long past.

Chloe flung herself across the couch and promptly batted at the clouds of dust that arose from it. " _Not_ a nice place you've got here," she said with a cough. She rolled her eyes at Max's _behave yourself_ look, then looked at the fresh paint on the wall. "Decent art, though," she said, surprised.

"Thanks," Rachel said in a small voice. She stood in the doorway of her makeshift refuge and fidgeted. "Why are you guys here?"

"Chloe wants to search for clues," Max said. She leaned forward with a conspiratorial look. "She secretly thinks she's Scooby Doo." Suddenly distracted, she peered into the box of art supplies Rachel had brought with her and pulled out a marker. "Do you mind?" she asked with a grin.

Rachel shook her head, then turned to Chloe. "What kind of clues?" she asked.

Chloe shrugged. "Hell if I know. That picture was taken here, though, right? And clearly you like to hang out here. Did you come here a lot?" She didn't wait for Rachel to answer, instead raising her eyebrows at Max writing "MAX WAS HERE" in blocky letters under the ledge of the window. "Dude, really?"

"Shut up," Max said cheerfully. "It's not a cliché, it's an _homage_." She capped the pen, dropped it back amongst Rachel's supplies, and brushed her hands on her jeans. "I'm gonna wander around," she declared. Chloe caught her fingers briefly when she wandered past, and they shared a look of goofy affection before Max stepped back out into the glaring sunshine.

In Max's absence, the awkwardness in the air was nearly palpable. Rachel shoved her hands into the pockets of her perfectly-torn jeans, and she kicked at the dirt on the floor. "She's really nice," she said.

"Yeah," Chloe agreed. She scowled to suppress the ridiculous and inevitable thinking-about-Max grin. "So why _are_ you hanging out in an abandoned junkyard?"

Rachel shrugged. "I don't really have any other place to go," she said. "There's a reason why I wanted to get the hell away from Arcadia Bay."

"I'm surprised your parents let you out of their sight, now that you're back," Chloe said.

"They're not the best at paying attention," Rachel said. "I'm not sure they really noticed I was gone in the first place."

Chloe let her head hang as she stared at the floor. Even while Joyce had struggled with grief and single-parenthood after her dad's death, Chloe had never doubted her mother's care. "That sucks."

Rachel took a step forward, so drawn in by the familiar posture that she reached out to scrub her fingers through Chloe's hair, like she'd done a hundred times before. She managed to stop herself with an awkward stutter. "Yeah," she agreed, then spun on her heel to walk outside.

Chloe pushed herself upright to follow and blinked hard once she was back in the bright sunlight. She pulled the photograph of her alternate self from her pocket and fiddled with it to ease out some of the wrinkles it had gained after being crunched in her clothing. "So where do you think this clunker is?" she asked. She held the photo up into the air and tried to orient to the junkyard landmarks.

"I think it's over there," Rachel replied. She pointed, then headed around a path that wound through the junk. Chloe followed amiably, and ran curious fingertips over the refuse that teetered within reach. When Rachel stopped walking, Chloe collided into her back with an audible "Oof."

"That's it," Rachel whispered. "That's the car."

Chloe held up the photo for comparison. "Looks like it," she agreed.

"Lie down on the hood," Rachel said immediately.

"What? No."

"If we recreate the photo, then maybe that fixes whatever the hell is wrong with this place," Rachel said. She grabbed at Chloe's hand and tugged.

Chloe's face twisted in awkward distaste as she allowed herself to be pulled towards the car. "I don't think that's how this works."

"You don't know that," Rachel snapped, as she lost her patience. "Just lie down. I want to go _home_."

"Why the hell would..."

"Don't you get it?!" Rachel yelled. " _You're_ the reason. You're the thing that's changed. You're why I'm here."

"You don't know that!" Chloe yelled back. "You don't know _me_ , or Max..."

"I _do_ know you, you fucking idiot!" Rachel cried. For a second she teetered on the edge of meltdown, before catching a ragged breath and pointing to the photo in Chloe's hand. "At least, I knew _her_. And she would have done _anything_ to help me."

Chloe grit her teeth and waited while Rachel paced in front of her, trying to regain her composure.

"Look," Rachel said, her voice shaky but calm. "Maybe here you and Max are all destiny and soulmates in time and space and whatever, but _there_ , we were..."

"We were - what?" Chloe asked, dreading the answer even as the odd familiarity swirled between them.

Rachel sighed heavily. "Friends," she replied. "We were _friends_ , Chloe. We went through a lot of shit together."

Chloe stared at her with narrowed eyes, but wasn't sure she could cope with the answer if she pushed the point further. She handed over the picture and shuffled over to climb onto the hood, then eased herself backward, shifting according to Rachel's directions.

"Try holding out your hands," Rachel said. For a moment she allowed herself to be distracted by the blue butterfly tattoo on Chloe's bare arm.

"This isn't doing anything," Chloe muttered, even as she complied and lifted her arms in the approximate pose of _naive doofus with with weapon_.

"Maybe you need a gun," Rachel said, her voice rising in agitation. "I could get you one."

At that, Chloe practically vaulted off the car. "Do I look like James fucking Bond to you?" she asked in disbelief. "No guns."

Rachel slammed the polaroid down on the hood of the car and stalked off. " _Fine_ ," she snarled. "Thanks for nothing."

"Dude, this is _not_ my fault!" Chloe called after the retreating woman, and shrugged at the middle finger cast back her way. "Fine, fuck you too," she muttered, then grabbed the picture again and set about looking for wherever the hell Max had wandered off to.

After a moment (which was totally _not_ panic-inducing, she swore), Chloe spotted Max sitting on the bow of a junked boat, with her head tilted upward and eyes closed against the bright sunshine. Chloe approached with a grin, squinting toward the sky. "Permission to board, Cap'n?" she called.

"Aye, matey!" Max called back with a lazy smile. She lolled her head to one side to watch Chloe's lanky form ascend almost gracefully, and with minimal swearing. When Chloe settled on the rickety deck next to her, Max scooted in close and leaned her head against Chloe's shoulder. "Hey," she murmured.

"Hey," Chloe replied, with a worried frown. "You doing okay?"

Max nodded a bit, then yawned. "Just tired. I collected a bunch of beer bottles, in case you need them."

Chloe looked past her and blinked at the pile of empty bottles. "Okaaay," she said, drawing out the word in confusion. "Did you hear all that?" she asked, with a vague gesture toward the spot where she and Rachel had argued.

"Parts of it," Max admitted. "She's really scared."

It was irritating how easily Max picked up on nuances like that while Chloe was otherwise distracted by her own annoyance. Chloe glowered. "Well, she's being a jackass about it," she said. "Apparently she and other-me were 'friends,'" she added, forming air-quotes with her fingers around the last word.

"I figured," Max replied. "She looks at you like she can't decide if she should care about you, even though she already does."

Chloe reared back a bit in alarm. "Do what now?"

"She likes you," Max said simply. "But she doesn't know if you're the same person she liked in that other place. That's gotta be really confusing."

Chloe squirmed. "Do you think she and other-me...?"

"Maybe," Max said. Even as uncomfortable tension vibrated through Chloe's limbs next to hers, Max remained entirely relaxed. "Cool doe," she announced, as she pointed across the junkyard to a deer wandering up a hill to chill behind a tree stump.

Chloe grunted vague agreement and eyed the animal with trepidation. "What is it with you and deer, anyway?" she muttered. She felt the familiar warmth of Max's body seep into her own, and let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Dude, doesn't this seem really fucking weird? Time and space and destiny and shit?"

Max hummed thoughtfully, but didn't answer, noticing the word from Rachel's diatribe that Chloe had plainly dodged.

_Soulmates_. Even unspoken, it hung heavy between them.

"I mean, I might be brilliant and mature beyond my years, but this is all bizarrely heavy," she continued. "What if Rachel's right, and this _is_ all about me? I wasn't expecting to be like, an inflection point in space and time." She sat back in pensive worry. "That's not what's actually happening, right?"

At that, Max shifted, turning to give Chloe a somber, mysterious look. "I'd change space and time for you, if I could," Max said quietly. "I'd remake the world for you."

She said it with such intensity, Chloe found herself holding her breath, and would have sworn the entire goddamned world had stopped spinning. She started when Max reached up to stroke gentle fingertips across her cheek, breaking the spell.

"Soulmates," Max concluded with a grin. She settled back against Chloe's side with a cute shimmy.

"Yeah," Chloe breathed, taking a moment to regain her usual smartass composure. "And now my mom's ready to marry me off before I can legally _drink_. Isn't that kind of terrifying?"

A serene smile had broken across Max's face somewhere in the middle of Chloe's nervous monologue. "Nope. You're just stuck with me."

Chloe swallowed. "That's... okay with you?"

"Chloe," Max said seriously. "You're my best friend, and you make me happy."

"Smokin' hot," Chloe prompted, softly in her ear.

" _And_ you're smokin' hot," Max agreed with a smirk. "All I could want in a soulmate." She poked Chloe in the ribs. "Besides, you're okay with it, too."

"Well, yeah, but you're way more pragmatic and shit than I am," Chloe said. She grumped at Max's sidelong look. "Hey, I know some big words. Shut up."

Max grinned and closed her eyes, savoring the shift of Chloe's arm around her waist.

"I _also_ knew we were destined to be together since I was like, just a kid," Chloe continued. "But then..."

"But then I left," Max murmured. "I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter anymore," Chloe replied with a shrug. "You came back."

"I always will," Max vowed. "But I'm not planning on going anywhere without you, just for the record."

Chloe studied her profile with narrowed eyes, and tried very hard to ignore the sudden terrified and hopeful ache in her chest. Her natural inclination was to push, to crack a joke about how maybe her mom really _should_ start shopping for dual-bride cake toppers. Instead, she settled, bumping her chin against Max's soft hair and blowing out a sigh of contentment. "You're awesome."

" _You're_ awesome," Max countered, as she fought off a yawn. "Cool if I nap on you for a bit?"

"Yeah," Chloe said quietly. "I'll take care of you."

And that was how Chloe found herself sitting watch in the junkyard, still and careful with Max curled on her lap, watching the sky for rain. She stroked Max's arm in an idle, mindless way, and her breath caught hard when Max reached and tangled their fingers together without really waking.

Around them, the junkyard creaked, and off in the distance a train whistle sounded. The air danced light and furtive against her skin, uncertain what season it should occupy. The scene would have been beautiful if Chloe's mind could have shed its unease to enjoy the moment. She hadn't actually been teasing earlier about recent events seeming "bizarrely heavy." Even copping a gratuitous snuggle with her girlfriend in the shade felt desperate and fragile. Every meeting with Rachel Amber was laden with portent. Max herself had developed moments of _presence_ that were downright alarming. Everything around them felt touched by fate; the birds flying by, the sun shining down, that damn deer staring at her across the junkyard...

As if irritated by Chloe's scrutiny, the deer abruptly shook its head, shimmered, then blinked out of existence. Chloe jerked, nearly hard enough to dislodge Max, who murmured briefly in protest. She soothed a gentle hand against Max's head and stared wide-eyed at the now-empty hill.

"Well, shit," she whispered.


	5. Rejected Hypothesis

When Max woke again, she stretched languidly against Chloe's watchful form and smiled. "Best nap ever," she declared as she sat up and bumped against Chloe's side. "Thanks for letting me chill with you."

Chloe bumped back and forced a smile. "Anytime, dude. Just don't tell your mom, 'cause I'm pretty sure she'd come after me with the pointy mom stick."

"'Pointy mom stick?'" Max asked with a chuckle.

"Doesn't your mom have one of those?" Chloe asked. "Mine sure does. Damn."

"I think my mom just has the 'I'm not mad, I'm disappointed,' face," Max said after pondering for a moment.

"Oh God, that's _worse_ ," Chloe groaned. She stood, offered a hand to Max, and guided her across a fallen plank to exit the boat.

As they wandered back toward the truck, Chloe looked over the decaying, rusted piles of junk with a strange sort of affection. "We should totally come back here and hang out," she said. "You know, once time and space and whatever are done fucking with us." She realized Max was no longer beside her, and twirled a bit to spot Max off in a clearing, staring into space, breathing shallowly through her mouth.

"Dude," Chloe called. She cocked her head and strolled back to Max's side, letting her long arms swing about. She peered in the same general direction Max was looking with a shrug. "Cool... old... washing machine?"

A second after she said it, Chloe realized Max was shaking. A second after that, Max fell to her knees.

Chloe grasped at her, barely keeping her from faceplanting in the dirt, and called Max's name in a panic. It was like the damned storm all over again, and Chloe's heart nearly seized in terror.

With one last shudder, Max took a deep breath and reared within Chloe's embrace. "Whoa," she murmured. She lifted a hand to her nose, surprised when her fingers didn't come away covered in blood. Except... she wasn't sick anymore. Why would there be blood?

She blinked owlishly at Chloe, and mustered a faint smile. "Wowser. Sorry about that."

"I'm taking you back to the hospital," Chloe declared, trying not to freak out.

"No, I'm really okay," Max protested, even as she let Chloe haul her back to her feet. "Seriously. Just low blood sugar. Get me a burger and I'll be fine."

Chloe peered at her worriedly, weighing the veracity of that claim. Max certainly _looked_ okay now, and the doctor had told them to expect some dizziness while Max recovered. 

"And fries. And maybe a milkshake," Max added, with an impish grin. "Oh, and pie. Pie fixes _everything_."

So yeah, Max was probably okay. With a roll of her eyes, Chloe grumbled and guided Max back toward the truck. "If it doesn't, I'm _really_ taking you back to the hospital."

Max grinned, and hoped Chloe didn't notice her cast one last look over her shoulder at that small clearing among the rickety scrap, and how the shadows of the trees fell across it in somber wefts.

* * *

It was probably some kind of weird temporally-displaced PTSD that made Rachel keep coming back to Two Whales. That, and the coffee.

She sat in her usual booth, listening to the ambient chatter of the diner's patrons, and poked idly at the graffiti scratched into the tabletop.

"NO FATE," read the scrawled, ominous text. She vaguely recognized it as some nerd movie reference, and was sure Chloe would have refused to explain it to her on principle, since she "certainly _wasn't_ some fucking nerd."

Rachel sighed. She missed Chloe - _her_ Chloe - more than she would have expected. The Chloe she'd known was a good companion for her profound dissatisfaction in life, a foil for her moody self-destruction. 

Without Chloe's snark and wit spurring her on, she was hard-pressed to see just what was so awful about life in Arcadia Bay.

"Got you some to-go joe, hon," Joyce announced brightly as she dropped a foam cup filled with coffee on the table. "Not that I'm kicking you out or anything, but the dinner rush is coming, and we'll need the booth."

"No, that's perfect," Rachel replied with a smile. "Thank you, Joyce."

She scowled as she fished a few bills out of her purse and slid out of the booth. Any world where Joyce Price was still a kind, gentle soul was a world worth living in - so why did everything feel sharp and broken? Why was she still so damned angry?

The coffee was too hot, but she still gulped it down as she stomped down the sidewalk, and in her grumpy distraction she almost collided with a homeless woman fishing cans out of the recycle bin.

For a moment, Rachel let herself imagine they could be kindred spirits at opposite ends of life's spiteful, worthless journey. Just as quickly, the thought shamed her, and she ducked her head so as not to look directly at the older woman's squalor. 

The woman looked up and squinted as Rachel hovered. "Well then," she drawled, as she tucked a can away in her trash bag. "Didn't think I'd see you 'round here again."

Rachel looked up and stared at the woman. A gnawing worry bloomed in her gut. "What? What do you mean?"

"Didn't you wander away down the coast? 'Rachel Amber the movie star?'"

God, that sounded so pathetic now. She'd dreamed of such amazing things, of such a glamorous life, and now...

"That's not me," Rachel replied, with a bitter shrug.

The woman shuffled closer and looked her over from head to toe. "No, not _you_. However did you manage that, I wonder?"

Before Rachel could muster a coherent answer, the woman's attention was wrenched away by an approaching bus. "Ah, there's my ride," she muttered, as she gathered her meager possessions and ambled toward the bus stop. "Best be on your way, Rachel Amber," she called over her shoulder. "Your friend Max says there's a storm comin'."

* * *

Pie had, indeed, fixed nearly everything.

Max sprawled once more on the couch next to Chloe, feeling pleasantly full of Two Whales' best takeout, while she scratched idly at the bandage on her head. She'd changed it religiously since getting out of the hospital, and worn a shower cap to keep the stitches dry, but the rest of her head was feeling super grungy.

And not in the fun retro ironic distressed flannel shirt kind of way.

"Hey Chlo'?" she asked, shy and quiet.

"Hm?" Chloe replied, half-distracted by her homework.

"Would you help me with something?"

Chloe turned her head toward Max, even as her attention remained on her notebook. "Sure. What's up?"

"Would you... wash my hair?" Max could practically see the train of thought derail across Chloe's face as she processed the question. "I haven't been able to since the hospital..."

"Dude. I'm on it," Chloe announced, in her determined-girlfriend voice. She set aside her homework and bounced to her feet, pointing Max toward the kitchen while she fetched shampoo and towels from the bathroom.

Max waited and fidgeted idly until Chloe returned, laden with supplies. "I'm sorry, I know this is a pain," she said.

"You can't see to keep your stitches from getting wet," Chloe said reasonably. "I didn't even think about that, dude. _I'm_ sorry."

"I just feel so pathetic. I keep falling asleep, I can't take basic care of myself..." She sighed and looked at her shoes, indulging in a pout.

Chloe put a gentle hand against Max's cheek to guide her gaze up, off the floor. "I wanna help, okay?" She frowned, seeking the right words to describe the ache in her gut as she met Max's sad, vulnerable eyes. "I like being the person you ask to take care of you."

Max gave her a small smile, and Chloe grinned back. "Now, lose the shirt, hippie," she ordered.

Which is how Max found herself in her jeans and bra, laying carefully across the kitchen counter, with her head propped on a folded towel tilted across the edge of the sink.

Before turning on the water, Chloe took a moment to study the stitches marring the side of Max's head and hissed in quiet sympathy.

"It doesn't hurt," Max said. She winced and tried not to squirm in twitchy discomfort. She was cold, exposed, didn't know what to do with her hands, and what was once the shy delight of changing clothes in front of her friend was spiked through with sexual tension that was absolutely ruined by the stupid and clinically necessary treatment of her injury. It all just made her stomach ache.

Chloe reached with trembling fingers to brush Max's hair away from her face. "I almost lost you," she murmured. 

The shaky fear evident in her voice jerked Max away from her self-preoccupation. She grabbed for Chloe's hand and held it tightly. "I'm okay," she promised. 

"Yeah, you better be," Chloe replied with a mildly threatening squint. She ducked away and grabbed an extra towel, then draped it carefully across Max's torso. "Sorry, dude. That's probably really cold."

Max's face scrunched in embarrassment and relief. "You can still look if you want," she mumbled, feeling the need to grant perfunctory girlfriend permission.

"Sometime later when you'd actually enjoy it," Chloe said easily. She turned on the sink, then waited as the water warmed up.

The anxious burn in Max's gut quickly dissolved, replaced by warm fondness as she watched Chloe bend very seriously to the task of something so basic, so easily taken for granted. Gentle fingers scrubbed across her scalp, warm water rinsed away shampoo, and Max happily followed Chloe's quiet directions to turn this way or that, safe and confident in her girlfriend's care.

By the time Chloe had carefully squeezed the last excess water from Max's hair, Max herself had melted into a languid puddle of relaxation. Chloe smirked at the blissed out look on Max's face, and shook her gently by the shoulder. "Dude, don't fall asleep here. Joyce'll be home in like an hour, and I've already hit my teasing quota for the month."

Max grinned and carefully sat upright. "You should wash hair, like, professionally," she declared. "So awesome." She used the closest available towel to dab at the excess water running down her neck, not noticing that it happened to be the fabric formerly guarding her modesty.

Chloe coughed a bit and kept her eyes pointed elsewhere as she gathered up the towels and shampoo, then mopped up the excess water on the counter while studiously _not_ looking at the pale, delicate, freckled skin of the girl she'd pined after for years...

"... You can still look if you want," Max said gently, grinning at Chloe's unexpected deference. A moment later she bit her lip in a fit of reflexive shyness. "Not that there's much to see."

"Dude," Chloe chided immediately. "You're... God. You're fucking gorgeous," she said. A moment later, her cheeks burned pink in embarrassment at the inelegant declaration, but she didn't try to take it back.

At any other time, from any other person, Max would have dismissed such a claim outright. But Chloe said it with such reverence, she could actually feel herself believe it. 

Max reached out and hooked a finger into the collar of Chloe's shirt and tugged, pulling her closer until Chloe was standing in between Max's knees at the edge of the kitchen counter. Chloe took that as an invitation and rested her hands at Max's hips and stroked her thumbs across the soft, inviting skin.

"I like that you like taking care of me," Max said. She leaned down to tilt her forehead against Chloe's.

"Yeah?" Chloe asked, taking her turn at being shy and quiet.

"Yeah," Max replied. "You're kind of the best."

Chloe tilted her face up to catch Max in a gentle kiss, and let her hands drift to Max's back as Max reached up to tangle fingers in her hair.

Making out with her best friend was pretty much the most amazing thing ever, and Chloe happily let the sensations overcome all of her senses. With her keen hearing very, very focused on every hitch in Max's increasingly-unsteady breathing, she just plain missed the familiar squeal of a bus' brakes down the road, and the subsequent rhythmic thump of her mother's heels down the sidewalk to their house.

It wasn't until the front door opened that Chloe's usual teenage fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and she broke away from Max in sudden alarm. Max exhaled a faint "Oh, shit!" as she slid off the counter and tried to track down her clothing.

"Hey girls!" Joyce called. She shuffled around the foyer, hanging up her coat and purse. "I got off work early, since Bonnie owed me a favor," she continued idly. "Hope y'all are behaving yourselves."

She rounded the corner into the kitchen, where Max's damp head was stuck somewhere up her sleeve, and Chloe was valiantly attempting to wrestle the shirt into place. Joyce merely folded her arms and leaned against the doorway with a smirk.

"Hi Joyce!" Max squeaked in panicked cheer. She flailed and yanked hard on her shirt, finally pulling her head through the right hole and coincidentally elbowing Chloe in the chin.

"Shit, ow!" Chloe yelped. She spun away and hopped out of the kitchen, hissing expletives as she went.

Max murmured a worried apology after her, then gave Joyce a chagrined look. "Chloe was just helping me wash my hair," she explained.

"You know, I didn't actually ask," Joyce drawled. "You okay, hon?" she called to her daughter.

Chloe re-emerged from her swearing fit in the living room, rubbing her chin. "Yeah, fucking awesome," she replied.

"Language," Joyce scolded, as per habit. "Now, you girls get the hell out of my kitchen, and go... do something else." When the two girls didn't immediately snap to, she flicked her hands at them. "Shoo!"

In moments, they'd gathered the towels and shampoo and stray clothing and were hustling up the stairs.

"And Max?" Joyce added, raising her voice as she leaned out the kitchen door after them. "Your shirt's on backwards." She grinned at the yelp of teenage horror that she got in response.

Behind the relative safety of Chloe's bedroom door, Max collapsed in a fit of nervous giggles. Chloe just slumped against the wall and looked dazed. "Seriously, death by mom-barrassment isn't really a thing, right?" she asked.

Max grinned, and tugged her arms out of her sleeves to flip the shirt right way around. "That probably could have gone worse," she mused. She grabbed a fresh bandage roll and went through the rote motions to carefully protect her stitches once more.

Chloe looked philosophical for a moment while she considered the lustful possibilities that constituted "worse," smirked, then sputtered when Max chucked random dirty laundry at her head.

"Whatever you're thinking about, _don't_ while Joyce is downstairs," Max ordered. "Don't you have homework or something?"

"Yeah, yeah," Chloe muttered. She paced across the room and flopped on her bed, then dug into her backpack for her books and laptop. "You're no fun," she said.

Max conceded that point and settled next to her, half-dozing in the last rays of the sunset, and enjoying the faint chords of some folk tune from Chloe's stereo. 

"Dude, check this out," Chloe said sometime later. She lifted her laptop and set it on Max's belly.

Max squinted and propped herself on her elbows to see the screen. "What is this?" she asked. The site in Chloe's browser had a lot of black and white pictures of what looked like early Arcadia Bay.

"I hit up the college's library website," Chloe explained. "They have a lot of stuff documenting shit about the town."

"You went nerdlike for me?" Max asked brightly, charmed beyond belief.

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Dude, there's _history_ around here. Crazy shit, over like, decades. You know the lighthouse?" 

"Yeah?" Max replied in an uneasy tone.

"It's completely fucked," Chloe said, blunt as usual. "Like, all of the original lighthouse keepers died in screwed up ways. Tons of ghost stories and shit."

Max had heard most of those stories growing up, so that wasn't wildly surprising. She frowned.

"The thing is," Chloe continued, "Native Americans have had legends about Arcadia Bay for hundreds of years. They actually warned the original Spanish settlers that the whole coast is 'possessed of great power,' and that's why we get crazy storms."

"Storms," Max breathed.

"Well, that and it's fucking Oregon and it rains here," Chloe said wryly. "Do you remember any of the old truckers at Two Whales talking about the Columbus Day storm?" Chloe said. She clicked around on her computer, then pushed the screen closer to Max's face. "Went up the whole Pacific Northwest and damaged all kinds of shit back in 1962. Apparently the locals said it was a 'storm of vengeance.'"

"Because of Columbus Day?" Max asked in confusion.

Chloe flipped the computer toward herself again, clicked to some another site, then presented a new page to Max. "There was a serial killer caught in Arcadia Bay that year," she said. "Asshole drugged and killed a bunch of women, and one of the victims finally escaped and turned him in - _during_ the Columbus Day storm. The police caught up with him at the lighthouse. He was gonna toss himself off the cliffs up there or something."

"That's crazy," Max said, for lack of any other coherent input. Her mind was racing, but unable to actually digest any of the meaning behind the story.

"Right? I always knew Arcadia Bay was fucking insane," Chloe declared. She closed the laptop and set it aside.

"So what does all that have to do with me?" Max asked, in a small, uneasy voice.

Chloe frowned. "I dunno, dude. But maybe there's just something weird about this place that hurts people. It made you sick, did _whatever the fuck_ to that Rachel girl, made reality all screwed up..." She paused and clenched her jaw in deep, long-lived anger. "Took away my dad," she added.

"Your dad..." Max whispered. "Chloe, I don't think this is about him." She reached out and ran a hand down Chloe's arm in comfort.

"You don't know that," Chloe said, though her tone was less than certain. "Maybe he's still alive for that other-me in the photo," she said. "It could happen."

Max sighed. "It could happen," she agreed. 

With that, Chloe settled down on her side, facing Max. Max reached up to stroke at Chloe's face with gentle fingertips, as she ached for the sadness in her friend's eyes.

"He would be happy for us," Chloe said quietly.

Max smiled. "Yeah, but only after he warned me not to break your heart," she said. "There totally would have been a shovel talk."

"Only after he warned _me_ not to break _your_ heart," Chloe added with a snort. "He loved you, dude."

They hung in the bittersweet moment for a while longer, until Chloe could no longer stand the heavy emotional burden and decided on a change of subject. "Hey, what do you wanna be for Halloween?" she asked.

Max chuckled. "Oh man, I haven't dressed up since..." She paused and sighed. "Since before I moved away. That last Halloween with you."

"Yeah. Me, too," Chloe replied, her voice sounding far away. Even when she tried, she couldn't shake off the memories. "Dad was always so great to go trick or treating with."

"The _best_ ," Max said with conviction. "I think my dad was always a little bummed that he wasn't as cool as yours."

"Your dad's pretty okay," Chloe murmured. She took a deep breath to chase off the pall of loss once and for all. "So. Sexy pirate this year? Sexy nurse? Sexy Harry Potter?" She wiggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

"I feel like there might be a theme here," Max said with a tolerant smile.

"Yup. You. Sexy. As little clothing as possible."

Max immediately felt her face scrunch and burn in a blush. "I dunno."

"You've got a few weeks to decide," Chloe said with a shrug. "I can take you to the Halloween outlet to try stuff on this weekend." She plucked gently at the fresh bandage wrapped around Max's skull. "No mummies, though."

Max hummed in agreement and settled happily against a cuddly Chloe. "Halloween's in a few weeks?" she asked through a yawn. "What day is it?"

Chloe contorted to retrieve her phone from the bedside table without dislodging Max from her snuggle. "Uh, Thursday," she answered, reading the phone screen. "The 10th."

"Huh," Max murmured, as she drifted toward a well-deserved nap. "Lost track of time."


	6. Experiment, again

"Hey," Chloe mumbled sleepily as she curled against Max's side sometime after dawn the next morning. "Can't sleep?"

"Uh uh," Max replied, with a tiny shake of her head. She kept her worried gaze locked on the ceiling of Chloe's room, and pressed a hand to her belly as if to hold back the anxiety burning deep in her gut.

Chloe shifted to press a kiss to Max's shoulder, then relaxed and headed back toward sleep. "I'm here, dude."

Which was exactly what she needed to hear, especially after having woken up overwhelmed with such indistinct, lonely despair. She turned her head to look at Chloe's mussed hair, then shut her eyes, trying to commit everything about the moment to memory.

Her hands were itching for her camera, which lead her to wonder - again - where it had disappeared to while she was sick.

She eased herself away from Chloe's sleeping form, tiptoed off to the bathroom, then came back with her face freshly scrubbed and even more questions swirling in her head.

Having gaps in her recollection was a wildly uncomfortable feeling, and Max found herself inclined to battle it with her usual way of capturing reality - photography. She grabbed Chloe's laptop from the beside the bed, curled up in the chair at her desk, and started working.

There were photos from Blackwell, from social media, from the town's own tourist website. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, so she started with broad categories: places, people, events, dates. All the research Chloe had done was still in her search history, so she used that to start filling in the blanks. The more she learned, the more it seemed that unusual events correlated with unusual weather: The Columbus Day Storm in 1962 and the serial killer, the floods in 1996 and the Prescott family scandal. Her own illness, and a storm in September.

She sorted the photos into dated folders on Chloe's computer desktop, then looked around to find her bag and noticed that Chloe was actually awake, watching her with a tiny grin.

"Shit!" Max yelled, jolting in surprise and cracking her knee into Chloe's desk. "Ow, _fuck_. How long were you over there creeping on me?"

Chloe immediately rolled off the bed to a crouch beside Max, then bent to place a kiss on her injured knee. "Sorry, dude," she murmured. "Just woke up a few minutes ago." She rubbed gentle circles into Max's thigh, getting just a little distracted when she looked up and saw the hooded expression directed back her way. "You know, I didn't even know I _had_ a sexy librarian kink until right this second," Chloe observed. "You're really cute when you're all studious and shit."

At that, Max rolled her eyes, and chuckled as she turned back to the computer. "Do you have a flash drive? I want to print these pictures."

"Sure," Chloe said. "I also have a shitty printer somewhere under that pile of laundry, but I'm guessing you're about to give me a lecture about proper ink and paper and how they matter for photographic reproduction."

"Don't forget color balance and saturation," Max added with a grin. "But yeah. I want to take them to the photo lab at the drug store, if that's okay."

"What, no creepy dark room hidden in the bowels of Blackwell?" Chloe joked, missing the pensive, almost sick look on Max's face as she plucked mostly-clean clothes from the monstrous pile of laundry, then wandered off to take a shower.

* * *

Despite the breezy, boring day, and the trip to the drug store (and the book store, and the library), Max couldn't help but feel restless as she pushed her fries across her plate at Two Whales.

Chloe chomped on her burger in her usual oblivious way, then reached over and stole one of Max's fries and dipped it into her milkshake.

"Gross," Max declared, purely out of reflex.

Chloe grinned, then leaned over to look out the window. "Hey, Rachel's here."

Under the table, Max poked Chloe with her foot. "Be nice, okay?"

With a dramatically innocent "Who, me?" pose, Chloe stuffed the rest of her burger in her face and flung her limbs out across the booth, taking up as much space as possible.

Rachel walked up with a sigh, with her hands in her pockets and her posture drawn inward. "Hi, guys," she said quietly.

Max smiled and invited her to sit, then offered her a few spare fries.

With a shake of her head, Rachel declined and sat primly at the edge of the booth bench.

"Weird day, huh?" Max asked.

Rachel looked over at her with a frown. "Yeah," she murmured.

"What's weird about it?" Chloe blurted. She swiped the back of her hand across her chin to clean it of burger crumbs.

Rather than answer, Max pulled out her newly-printed stack of photos and spread them across the table. "Want to help me go through these?" she asked Rachel. 

For a few minutes, they sifted through the photos, swapping a couple here and there based on what they each remembered of the town's history. Eventually, Rachel pulled a pair of photos out of the arrangement, and pointed at them. "What is this?"

Chloe leaned across the table. "Oh yeah, the Prescott Shitstorm," she said. "I remember that."

"You were like two years old," Max countered with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm a prodigy," Chloe insisted with a smirk. She leaned out of the booth, and yelled in the general direction of her mother tending the diner's bar. "Hey Mom, we need a 'historical perspective.'"

Joyce wandered over, wiping her hands with a towel. "Please tell me that wasn't a fancy of way of calling me old," she said wryly.

Max grinned and held out the photos Rachel had isolated. Joyce looked them over, then hummed a bit.

"Ah, right. The flood, and that mess with the Prescotts. Weird how that all happened at once."

" _What_ all happened at once?" Rachel asked.

Joyce frowned, casting back in her mind for the drama of so many years ago. "Well, this hellion was just a toddler," she said, reaching out to muss Chloe's hair. "And most of the waterfront was flooded after the river overflowed its banks."

"And the Prescotts got outed as crazy assholes," Chloe added. "I love that part."

"Tch," Joyce scolded. "There were always rumors about that family," she said. "But the local paper got a tip about some very shady business dealings, and when the news broke, it just got worse and worse. Such a shame, really."

"The town chased 'em out," Chloe concluded, as her mom headed back to work. "Total justice boner."

Rachel frowned, and opened her mouth to ask more questions, but was interrupted by a massive crack of thunder and a burst of hail skittering across the diner's windows.

Max went pale. "Oh, no," she whispered.

* * *

Within twenty minutes, the storm had knocked out power across the the whole town. Joyce broke out flashlights and a couple lanterns, insisting that the diner's patrons stay put to ride out the worst of it.

Max was huddled behind the bar, clutching her head and trying her hardest not to freak the hell out.

Chloe paced nearby, agitated by proxy. Rachel watched them both, and eventually sat at Max's side.

"I have to get to the lighthouse," Max muttered under her breath. 

Rachel frowned, and leaned in a bit closer. "Why?"

"I don't know," Max replied. She clutched her stack of photos and tried not to flinch as the thunder crashed again and again.

Chloe knelt beside her, and put a gentle hand to Max's head. "You okay, dude?"

"No," Max said, miserably.

Rachel leaned in. "We need to get to the lighthouse."

"We're _not_ going out there," Chloe said.

"I have to," Max insisted, as she pushed up to her feet. "You can come or don't."

Another blinding flash of lightning, and Max was gone. Rachel clutched at Chloe's arm before bolting after the other girl.

Chloe could only swear and chase them both.

* * *

She had no idea how Max and Rachel had moved so quickly, but she still hadn't spotted them as she struggled up the hill, keeping her eyes on the ground both to stay on her feet and to avoid looking at the horrific cyclone inching toward the town.

"Max!" Chloe cried. She held her hand in front of her face to ward off the driving rain, though it didn't really help.

With a deafening crack and the distinct smell of ozone, everything went still.

Chloe sputtered a bit, and wiped sodden hair from her face. "What the fuck?" she asked...

... only to be echoed by someone ten steps ahead who, aside from the vivid blue hair, looked exactly like her.

* * *

The storm had, for lack of a better word, stopped.

Chloe panted and stared at her double, then looked past her and almost crumpled in relief when she spotted Max blinking into the suddenly-still sky. She charged over and grabbed her by the shoulders. "God, Max."

"Chloe?"

It was Rachel, staring at the blue-haired girl who could only look back in slack-jawed confusion.

"Rachel," she exhaled, before they ran to each other for a desperate hug.

One figure stood alone at the crest of the hill, holding out her hand. She took a deep, steadying breath, and turned back to the four other women.

The version of Chloe with blue hair stepped forward, staying within arm's reach of Rachel. "Max?"

The other Max's face scrunched in a shy smile. "Didn't think that would work."

"What the _hell_?"

"I stopped time," Max replied. "Just like I did to get to Kate." She looked down at her hand and flexed her fingers. "Cool."

"What the _fuck_ is happening?" yelled blonde-Chloe. She kept "her" Max tucked against her side, and tried not to shake.

The other Max stepped over and gave them a gentle look. "It's the storm," she explained. "I don't know why, but it's powerful, and it lets me change time."

"That doesn't make any fucking sense," Chloe argued, even as her Max reached out with a stack of photos in her hand.

"You'll need these," Max said.

The other Max smiled, and took the photos gratefully. "Thank you," she said. She looked around at the clearing, at the storm paused in its fury, and at her own Chloe, then she chose a photo and got to work.

* * *

**July, 2010.**

She'd never expected Victoria Chase's daily selfie habit would ever in any way be helpful, but it turned out to be exactly what she needed.

Every day, she materialized somewhere near Blackwell, and took the bus to Chloe's house. Every day, she waited for the mailman to come and go, then she'd check the mail.

After five (or was it six?) tries, she found the envelope she'd been expecting, in pretentious Blackwell-imprinted stationery. She tore the letter open and sighed in a mixture of relief and regret.

She knew Chloe would never be able to attend Blackwell without a scholarship, and she knew Chloe would miss the deadline to apply if she didn't have the information in the letter.

She desperately hoped this version of Chloe would fare well far away from the Vortex Club and anyone named Rachel Amber.

* * *

**April 21st, 2013.**

Rachel missed clipping the gas station sign by a whole six inches as she swung the RV into the parking lot. She hopped out of the vehicle, laughing brightly as she shut the door on a grumbling Frank while he struggled to put the driver's seat back where he liked it. She couldn't wait to see the picture he'd snapped of her first driving adventure.

Max popped around the RV's front bumper with a grin. "Rachel! Hi!"

She stopped and blinked, trying to figure out why she recognized this girl. "Um. Hi," she said cautiously. "Do I know you?"

"I'm a friend of Chloe's," Max said. 

Which was fairly weird, because Rachel knew full well that even on a good day, she was Chloe's _only_ friend. She backed up a step and started scanning the narrow parking space for a means of escape.

Max sighed and rubbed her face in frustration. "My name is Max Caulfield," she said. 

Oh. The girl from all those photos in Chloe's house, about whom Chloe insisted (weirdly, vehemently) that her feelings were strictly platonic and not at all (really, really) gay. Rachel relaxed a bit, but still kept her distance.

"I know you care about Chloe," Max continued. "She's in danger, and I need your help to help her."

"In danger?" Rachel scoffed. "Are you _high_? Or is she?"

Max grit her teeth, and consciously let her guard down, putting her worry, fear, and stress on plain display. "Mark Jefferson is going to kill her," she ground out. "I can stop him, but I need your help."

Her entire body seized up in instant, panicked reaction, and she felt the blood drain from her face. It still didn't make any sense, but yet _it made perfect sense_ , and it was terrifying. 

"What...?" Rachel stammered.

Max took a step forward and offered a hand. In her other hand, she held a photo, something that looked like a generic family tourist shot of Arcadia Bay's lighthouse. "I need you to come with me, then lay low until October."

" _October_?! What the _actual_ fuck?" Rachel snarled, even as she reached for Max's hand.

The world spun dizzyingly around her, then rematerialized on the hill under the lighthouse. A young woman was there, chasing after a toddler.

"Oh, hey!" the woman said cheerfully, as she scooped up the giggling child. "Would you mind taking a picture of us?"

She handed a dazed Rachel Amber her phone, then posed happily with her son in the spring sunshine.

* * *

**September 30th, 2013.**

"Oh, hi Max," Juliet said, from behind the print station at the back of the classroom. "Didn't see you come in."

Max quickly shoved the copy of the Blackwell Totem that Juliet had not yet finished into her pocket. "Hey, Juliet," she said. She looked around, trying to find the best way to a graceful exit.

"Are you feeling better?" Juliet asked.

"Uh, what?"

"You said you had a headache, and that's why you weren't going to help me with the photo for the article on the Everyday Heroes contest," Juliet replied, eyeing her with some annoyance. "I had to take a crappy picture _myself_."

"Right!" Max chirped. "Sorry. My head - no, not feeling better. I should probably get back to the dorm and nap it off."

"Weren't you just there?" Juliet asked as she stood and wandered over. "You already changed clothes. And why is your jacket wet? It hasn't started raining yet."

Max froze, pinned under Juliet's shockingly observant gaze.

"I'm a _reporter_ , Max," Juliet added, dripping with disdain. "I _notice_ things."

With an exasperated noise, Max backed away. "Ask me later, okay?" She bolted, relieved when Juliet didn't bother following past the classroom door, then ducked away from a security guard she didn't recognize to escape down the hall. She sprinted to the dorm, and let herself into her room...

... where another Max was sitting dazedly on her bed, stuffing tissue up her nose.

"... won't stop bleeding," other-Max slurred.

Max dropped to her knees in front of her counterpart. "Ohhh, no. Are you all right?" she asked.

Other-Max only stared at her blankly. "My head really hurts," she said, as if that explained everything, including the double of herself barging into her room.

Max looked around, grasping for options. She found her counterpart's phone and unlocked it, grateful to find a running text exchange with this timeline's Chloe.

She tapped out a few quick messages, dug into the other Max's bag and swapped the camera with a photo of a different Chloe, then helped the girl to stand. "We have to get to the lighthouse, okay?" Max said. "Chloe will meet you there. It's gonna be all right."

Outside, the afternoon sky darkened with an impending storm.

* * *

**November 27th, 2008.**

She stepped around the reporters taking photos of the rescue vessels as they returned to port, and she tugged her rain jacket a bit tighter across her shoulders to ward off the chill. A fishing vessel had capsized in the bay early that morning, losing two crew members. Max vaguely remembered hearing about Arcadia Bay's Thanksgiving day tragedy on the news in Seattle. Mostly she remembered feeling guilty that she hadn't called Chloe.

She spotted a familiar face in the crowd, and jogged to follow him as he crossed the street to head to Two Whales. "Ouch!" she cried dramatically as she threw herself to the ground, crashing into him on the way.

"Whoa!" David Madsen barked. He turned and managed to mostly catch Max as she fell, then set her down gently on the ground. "You okay there?"

Max summoned every ounce of teenaged deceit she could muster, and offered a dramatic grimace. "I twisted my ankle," she said, as she clutched at her leg. "Ow!"

David looked around for assistance, but the crowd had dissipated rapidly. He sighed and took ginger hold of her foot, looking it over. "Does this hurt?" he asked, poking a bit.

"Ow, yes," Max replied, almost convincingly as she swatted his hand away. "This _sucks_. I have a track meet tomorrow."

He squinted at her, and she realized she'd taken the ruse too far. She wasn't exactly built like someone who spent a great deal of time exercising. To distract him, she rolled away and pushed upright on her "good" foot, then started hobbling away dramatically. "I'll catch the bus to the hospital," she declared without looking back at him.

"No, wait," he said. He stepped in front of her and held out his hands. "I can take you to the hospital. Don't want you getting hurt worse."

"Oh, that's _really_ nice of you," Max declared, as she let him sling an arm around her side to keep the weight off her foot. "You should totally be a doctor or something," she gushed as she leaned on him. "You have a great bedside manner."

David blinked in surprise. "I'm... I _was_ a soldier," he argued. "Patching people up isn't really my thing."

She shrugged. "Helping people is helping people." A few minutes later, with her foot propped up in the backseat of his beat up old car, she looked out the window at Two Whales and sent out a silent apology to Joyce, who would be closing the diner early for Thanksgiving and not meeting her future husband that day.

* * *

**October 9th, 2013.**

"I double dare you. Kiss me now."

She'd thought returning to this morning might be a respite, a familiar, comfortable place to regain her bearings. Chloe was still happy to see her, still quick to tease. Rachel was still "missing," not "dead and rotting in a shallow grave." She still felt like a kid on an adventure with her best friend.

It was one of her fondest memories. She wasn't sure she'd feel this carefree ever again.

"Max?" Chloe said uncertainly. "Uh, it was just a joke, dude."

Max broke. She fell to her knees and sobbed.

After a horrified second of shock, Chloe knelt before her, reaching out but not quite touching her. "Max," she whispered. "Oh god, I'm sorry, I don't know... didn't mean to..."

Max lunged and grabbed her in a fierce, desperate hug, burying her face in Chloe's shoulder and just held on. When she felt Chloe's arms close around her, she could breathe again.

She babbled for a bit, telling Chloe way too much way too soon. Max found herself desperate to say everything, just once, just in case she never got another chance... That she was so sorry for leaving Arcadia Bay. That she only got to meet Rachel briefly but could tell she was a decent, troubled person. That she loved Chloe, with all her heart, and always had.

Max pulled away, and could see the confused, worried look on Chloe's face, and could only sigh and shed a few more tears for the mess she'd made of absolutely everything.

After she composed herself, she rewound, took Chloe up on her dare and kissed her _hard_ , then fell into yet another photograph.

* * *

**August 10, 2008.**

"Say 'Space Needle!'" Vanessa Caulfield commanded cheerily, as she snapped the photo of Max and her dad.

It was safe to say Max was lost. She couldn't really keep track of all the fractured iterations of reality she was spawning as she went, and the ripples of destruction she was leaving behind. 

On impulse, she asked her dad to buy her a postcard, then scrawled a quick note and prayed it would find Chloe, somewhere, sometime.

_Be good. I'll be back soon. Love, Max_

* * *

**April 22nd, 2013.**

Max found herself in a dark, eerie clearing in the shadow of the lighthouse. Nathan Prescott was crouched in the leaves, watching the play of shadow and light on the forest floor. His fingers were clenched so hard around his camera that his knuckles had gone bone white.

She sat down on a fallen log, tucked her hands into her pockets, and waited.

He didn't even turn around. "I don't know who you are, but I know you've been coming for me."

"Yeah?" she asked, dully. "Okay."

He turned to stare at her, but she didn't elaborate. Instead Max nodded and looked around, noticing the doe watching them from within a singular beam of light nearby. The whole setting felt surreal, disconnected, and she wondered briefly if this was how Nathan felt all the time.

"My name is Max," she said finally. "We haven't met yet. I'll be starting at Blackwell in September."

He shifted minutely, watching her in a sullen, curious way.

"I'm a photographer, like you," she continued, nodding to the camera in his hands. "I was really looking forward to learning under Mark Jefferson."

At that, he jerked and for a moment looked like he was about to run away.

"Then I found out how evil he is," she continued, holding his gaze steadily. "How he hurts people."

"How do you know about that?" he whispered.

"He hurt my best friend," Max said. "I know he hurt you. He wants to hurt Rachel Amber."

She didn't even see him move, but suddenly he was up and pacing. "He wants me to bring her to him," he said, gesturing wildly with his camera. "He wants to make her his 'masterpiece.'"

"He can't," Max said. "I've made sure she's safe."

"There's no such thing as ' _safe_ ,'" Nathan spat in disgust.

She nodded in exhausted agreement. "Yeah, you're probably right," she said. She slumped, dejected, and pulled the remaining photographs out of her pocket to examine each one briefly before tossing it to the forest floor.

She was so, so tired. The power that had brought her this far was nearly consumed, and yet here she was, six months behind her present self, and not even with Chloe to keep her company as it all fell apart.

Nathan had stopped pacing and sidled up closer, cautiously looking at the photographs she discarded. "Hey, that one," he said, pointing.

Blearily, Max peered up at him, then at the photo of the dorm at Blackwell on the ground. 

"There's no plaque," he said.

She shrugged, not seeing the significance.

"The Prescott Foundation plaque," he said, his mouth curling in distaste as he explained. "It's been there as long as the dorm has been there, but it's not in that photo."

"I don't know what that means," Max replied, bluntly. Yet, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope, of _something_...

He stared off into space for a bit. "When we meet later, you're not you, yet," he said. "I knew you were coming, but it's all out of order."

Max was by then practiced in the art of verb tenses mangled by time travel, but even she had to take a moment to decode what he said. "Can you control time, too?" she asked.

The look he gave her was familiar from a future Nathan, one that expressed disbelief that another human could be so feeble minded. "What? _No_ ," he snapped, profoundly annoyed that he had to explain at all. " _You_ caused the storm, not me."

If she'd had any tears left, she might have fallen apart right then. Instead she just cast out her hands. "The storm brought me here," she declared. Nathan stared at her, and she sniffled a bit, remembering how threatening she'd once found him. 

"You said Rachel was safe," he said.

"I _think_ she is," Max replied, hating the weakness unraveling in her voice. "There's another place where she ran away from Arcadia Bay. I took her there to hide for a few months."

"Another place?"

"Timeline, universe, whatever," she spat. "I can move between them, but..."

He leaned down, putting his face directly in front of hers. "Another place where there isn't a Prescott Foundation?!" he demanded, jabbing his finger at the photograph.

"I don't _know_ , okay? I don't give a rat's ass about you or your family," she yelled. "I didn't do anything to the Prescotts."

With a lightning fast motion, he grabbed hold of her arm, bruising her. " _You_ don't have to," he growled. "Just take me there. Me, and Jefferson."

Her nostrils flared at the mention of the sick fuck at the root of it all. "Why?" she choked out.

"If my family doesn't have power there, then he doesn't have protection," he explained. "I can stop him."

She considered that, and grit her teeth in terrified resolve. "Okay," she agreed, for lack of literally any other viable option. "But we're going to need evidence to take him down."

He nodded, mirroring the determination and fear in her expression. "The red binders in the dark room," he said.

"Shit," she breathed, scrubbing her eyes with her free hand. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

* * *

**October 12, 1962.**

The camera was an antique, and Max eyed it with long-forgotten envy as the grizzled man stashed it back in the cab of his truck. He spotted her in one of the door mirrors as it quivered in the wind. "Hey, girlie, you need to get along home," he called. "This wind isn't playing around."

Indeed. Her hair was soaked in the rain, and she pushed it out of her face to look him in the eye. "There's a man," she said, as she felt the wind cut through her thin windbreaker. She didn't bother hiding the resulting shakes that rattled across her small frame. "He tried to..."

She didn't have to feign the tears. She leaned one hand against his truck and started to cry.

The man looked back at her in horror, then gathered her into the truck and took her to the police department. There, to two fresh-faced police detectives, she spun a tale straight out of a horror film: An old barn on the edge of town, a bearded man who'd abducted her, did unspeakable things, took photos...

The detectives were skeptical, but dutifully followed her directions to the edge of town, all while the infamous Columbus Day Storm bore down on the Oregon coast, tossing about debris and raining chaos around Arcadia Bay.

In the Prescott Barn, they found a young man, shaken and bleeding. They found photographs - _terrible images_ \- of young women who had been harmed in horrifying ways.

"He said he was going to the lighthouse," the young man explained.

With emergency resources spread thin by the storm, not to mention being wildly out of their depth with what looked like the discovery of an especially depraved serial killer, the detectives made them both swear to stay in the barn to ride out the storm while they chased the man.

The siren faded into the distance as Max looked back to Nathan. She could feel the world turning white and fuzzing around her, calling her back to some far off place. She wanted to apologize, knowing she was leaving him there, displaced and alone. 

Nathan Prescott gave her a faint smile, and said something that looked a lot like, "Good luck."

Having found the end of its slack, time suddenly pulled taut and yanked her backward (or was it forward?), changing and reforming at least two universes as she traveled, before depositing her back at a lighthouse on one particularly fateful October day.


	7. Results, again

She looked up from the photo, and saw... herself. Or the slightly-different version of herself from another timeline, who looked a little worse for wear. Max exhaled a faint laugh, and rocked back on her feet.

"Dude?" asked Chloe. She wasn't sure which one. "Dude, the storm."

Max looked over her shoulder, out past the lighthouse and over the bay, where the huge, terribly-threatening cyclone was simply _gone_. She could feel the energy stored in the moment draining away, so she bounded over to her other self.

"I don't think we have much time," she said. "But I need to return these." She handed over a phone and camera, and the stack of photographs other-Max had brought along.

"One of those is yours," other-Max replied, with a sniffle. She huddled closer to her Chloe, who tightened an arm across her shoulders in reflex, but couldn't manage any actual speech.

"Oh, right," Max said. She shuffled through the photos until she found the one she'd taken in the junkyard, put it carefully in her bag, then threw her arms around both women in a hug. "Thank you," she whispered, against Chloe's ear. "Thank you for taking care of her, and for looking after Rachel."

She backed away gingerly, and with an incongruous pop, the world wound back into motion again, but far less dramatically than before. The raindrops holding their stations in the sky fell harmlessly to the ground, the howling wind immediately dropped off into a faint breeze, and the "spare" Max and Chloe were relegated back to wherever they were supposed to be, leaving only three women standing at the lighthouse, under a bland, unthreatening sky.

Max flexed her fingers one last time, then let her hand fall to her side. She grinned at Chloe. "Tell me how awesome that was later when I forget, okay?"

"Holy shit, dude," Chloe breathed.

"Everything's okay, now?" Rachel asked, blinking in disbelief. "What about the other... you two?" She pointed between Max and Chloe, then pointed to the spots where the other versions had been just a moment before.

"They're back where they belong," Max said. "And so are you."

"I don't understand," Rachel said, on the verge of frustrated, frightened tears.

"You stashed her in another timeline," Chloe breathed. "You kept her safe."

"Safe from _what_?" Rachel demanded, still clutching at Chloe's arm.

Chloe looked down at her, and swallowed against a vaguely sick recollection that spun away like a half-remembered dream. "I don't know," she admitted. She and Rachel both turned wide, questioning eyes back to Max.

Max tucked her hands in her pockets. "You would have gotten hurt," she said gently. "If you'd been here, bad shit would have happened. I needed you to stay out of the way while I fixed it."

Rachel shivered a bit, somehow aware that she'd cheated death in a _very_ complicated way. "So now what?"

"Well, technically, you ran away months ago. It might be hard to explain where you've been," Max said, having had the advantage of seeing the ripples of cause and effect first hand. "You could head to California, see if Hollywood has any openings. Stick to the original plan," she concluded with a smile and a shrug. 

She turned to look just as a burnished ray of the setting sun fought through the dwindling storm clouds to shine down on the lighthouse, and she exhaled a tiny laugh. "Frank's waiting in the parking lot at the beach," she concluded. "He'll take you anywhere you want to go."

"Holy _shit_ , dude," Chloe said, again, for lack of literally anything else to say.

Max beamed at her, then cleared her throat. "I'll, uh, let you guys catch up," she murmured, as she moved to step past them. She put a gentle hand on Rachel's shoulder, offering a kind smile before ducking her head and wandering down the hill.

Rachel shook herself a bit, and turned to Chloe with a faintly overwhelmed look. "Um..." she blurted.

With a muted whimper, Chloe lunged forward and gathered Rachel into a clumsy hug. "Oh god, Rachel," she whispered. "I thought I'd never see you again."

Rachel exhaled a weak laugh, and hugged Chloe back. "Aw, hey now. I'm okay."

"You _weren't_ , though," Chloe argued. "You heard Max. Something terrible happened. Would have happened, whatever."

"Yeah, I can't really..." Rachel shook herself again and deliberately set that notion aside, then noticed Chloe leaning in, with that painfully vulnerable look she'd always had a soft spot for. "God, I missed you, so much," she whispered, reaching up to put a gentle hand to Chloe's cheek. 

"I missed _you_. I never got to tell you..." She shook her head, and swallowed hard against familiar, bitter loss. "I thought you'd just left me."

Rachel tilted her head. "I wouldn't do that, Chloe. I _couldn't_. You were the only person who ever meant shit to me here. You were the only one who actually cared."

"You know that's not true," Chloe said, suddenly feeling very tired. She let her entire body droop, and dug her fingers into the soaked flannel of Rachel's shirt. "You _saved_ me," she declared, low and rough.

That was more than a little staggering, and Rachel could only give her a pained smile. She took Chloe's hand, then turned to lead her down the lighthouse path. 

"So, Max is really nice," Rachel offered. It occurred to her that she might not have been so generous some months earlier, and that Chloe's deep, abiding regard and loyalty to this girl Rachel had never met used to dig at every jealous nerve in her body. She bumped against Chloe with a grin. "Hey, did you ever tell her about _The Tempest_?"

Chloe coughed out a strange noise, then rubbed at the flush that immediately scrawled across her cheeks. "No," she said, simply. "But it figures that that was a storm, too."

With that, all lingering jealousy immediately fizzled away, and Rachel grinned, feeling light and free in a way she didn't even recognize. She stopped walking, tugging Chloe to a halt. A scrap of paper stapled to a tree near the path had caught her attention, and she eyed it with sad sigh.

**MISSING FROM:**  
Arcadia Bay  
 **DATE MISSING:**  
Mon, April 22, 2013  
 **Nathan Prescott**  
Age 19

That itched in her brain for a moment, but she couldn't resolve the feeling into anything beyond vague sympathy.

Chloe followed her gaze and winced at the poster. "Sucks, huh? Nathan was always such a screwed up dude."

"Yeah," Rachel said absently. 

She started back down the path again, and after a few steps conspicuously let go of Chloe's hand. "Look, we both know I'm not... that I was just a placeholder, right?"

Chloe's face fell in instant, heavy guilt, and she looked down the path where Max had headed. 

"I mean, I am _so_ glad Max came back to you," Rachel continued, in a soft voice. "But I know I was only keeping her spot warm in your heart."

"No, wait, that's bullshit," Chloe protested, rearing away. "You're _you_ , and you're amazing."

Rachel took a deep breath. "I'm not _anyone_ ," she argued. "I'm just whatever makes people happy." She swiped at angry tears that fell across her cheeks. "I don't know if the Rachel Amber you thought you knew ever really existed."

Chloe leapt in front of her and grabbed her by the shoulders. "No. The Rachel Amber I know is a force of _fucking_ nature," she insisted. "There's a reason it took a goddamned storm to bring you back, and you don't get to tell me that's not real. That _we_ weren't real." When she realized Rachel wouldn't meet her gaze, Chloe let go and backed away. "I don't love Max any less just because I loved you, too."

With a sardonic chuckle, Rachel tilted her head up toward the sky. "I think that's the first time I've ever believed someone who said that," she said. She shifted away and kept walking down the hill, with Chloe following miserably a few paces behind.

This was _not_ how she'd imagined their reunion would go.

Eventually they reached the bay's thin stretch of beach, and beyond that the parking lot. Rachel hesitated, eyeing the familiar RV, then dragged her eyes across the beach to where Max stood, alone and facing the waves. "What is she doing?" she asked, calling to Chloe over her shoulder.

"So she does this crazy timeline jumping," Chloe explained. "And when she comes back it takes a while for time to snap back into place, for her. I think she's waiting for that."

"She's in limbo," Rachel murmured, having recently gained a great deal of insight into such a state. "She doesn't know what reality will be like when it's over."

Chloe shrugged, not really having given it much thought.

"She's waiting to see who you'll choose," Rachel added softly. She turned on Chloe in profound irritation. "Chloe Price, does that girl somehow _not_ know you've been in love with her for half your life?!"

Chloe sputtered and cast a hand out in a mildly desperate flail. "It's not, _we're_ not... She's..."

"You _have_ to tell her," Rachel insisted. "She deserves to be happy with you."

Chloe's cheeks burned as she stared hard at the sand-strewn asphalt of the parking lot, avoiding Rachel's gaze, which was harder when Rachel stepped closer and leaned in under her face.

"She saved _me_ for _you_ ," Rachel said quietly.

"Yeah, well," Chloe murmured, with a dazed look. "She's awesome."

Rachel just shook her head, then turned back to the parking lot and whistled. A bark of recognition echoed back in immediate reply, followed by Pompidou the formerly-fearsome dog careening away from his favorite spot half-buried in the sand, barreling toward Rachel at full speed.

She laughed and braced herself for his jump, then caught the happily-squirming beast as he leapt at her in joy.

Frank bounded out of the RV angrily, ready to chase down his dog. He skidded to a halt when he saw Rachel fending off Pompidou's clumsy affection.

"Rachel?" Frank breathed, looking for all the world like a man who was seeing a ghost.

"Hey, Frank," Rachel greeted with a sad smile. She set Pompidou down, and laughed as the dog bonked his head against her hand to ensure she'd still pet him.

Frank approached gingerly, and reached out to touch Rachel's hair in unusual reverence. "Holy shit, Price. You actually found her." He looked at Chloe in confusion. " _Where_ did you find her?"

"Long story, dude," Chloe croaked. "Would you mind taking her on a road trip?"

"What? Really?" He looked down at Rachel. "You just got back and now you're leaving?"

She put on a grim face as she peered back up at him. "You know how it is. Bad shit here. I really need to start over somewhere else. Would you take me?"

" _Anywhere_ ," he vowed immediately.

Chloe winced a bit, hearing a very familiar desperation in his voice, recalling a time not so long ago that she'd made the same vow to the same girl, hoping for just a scrap of her affection in return. 

"But give me a few minutes," Frank said, with a worried look over his shoulder at the RV behind him. "I gotta clean up."

Rachel chuckled a bit and let him go. Pompidou stayed at her side, woofing happily as she crouched and scratched his ears.

Feeling very much like a third (or fourth, she thought, eyeballing Pompidou) wheel, Chloe jammed her hands into her pockets and found an envelope she didn't remember stashing there, full of cash. She shook her head and swore under her breath, then offered it to Rachel. "Pretty sure Max wants you to have this," she said. "Tell Frank we're even."

"Holy shit," Rachel said bluntly as she sifted through the bills in the envelope. "'Handicapped Fund?'" she read, then squinted at Chloe. "Did you guys seriously steal this from Blackwell?"

Chloe just shrugged, and offered a shy grin while keeping an eye on Max.

Eventually Frank popped back out of the RV, bustled past them with a bag overflowing with trash that he promptly crammed into the nearby dumpster, then declared the vehicle suitable for Rachel's presence. 

Rachel thanked him, then waited for him to shepherd Pompidou into the RV and start the engine. She stepped up, into the door, then turned to bid Chloe farewell.

Just then, Max jerked and swung her head around in alarm. Chloe reacted immediately, and took two steps away before realizing Rachel was still standing there, watching her in some amusement.

Chloe looked back at Rachel, the woman who had at one time consumed her thoughts. She smiled a bit, then leaned in on tiptoe to kiss Rachel on the cheek. "Be happy, huh?" Chloe said.

"You too," Rachel replied, soft and sincere. "Take care of Max."

Chloe jogged away and tossed her hand up in a farewell. "I will!" she called, before turning to sprint down the path to the beach. "Max!" she yelled, laughing. After several long strides, they practically collided, and Chloe threw her arms around Max to pick her up for a spin.

"Chloe?!" Max looked completely bewildered, and more than a little dizzy as her feet found the earth again. "What day is it?"

"It's Friday!" Chloe announced. "Friday _night_. You did it, dude! You saved Arcadia Bay!"

Max clutched at Chloe's jacket, tugging it aside and looking her over for any evidence of injury. "You're okay?" she demanded.

"I'm okay," Chloe promised.

Not at all content to take her word for it, Max kept looking, and even tugged off Chloe's beanie. 

As an afterthought, Max stared at the hat bunched in her fist, then blinked back up at Chloe. "Your hair's blue," she observed, in vague puzzlement.

"Yeah," Chloe agreed with a chuckle. She let her hands slide to a comfortable hold around Max's waist and grinned like an idiot. "You'll catch up eventually."

Max pressed her fingers to her own scalp, but was unable to find evidence of a scar, which was... weird, right? Beyond Chloe, she saw Frank's RV carve a wide turn out of the parking lot, with a young woman dangling precariously out a window, waving frantically. "Is that _Rachel_?!" she asked.

Chloe laughed again, then lunged forward and hugged her, hard. Off-balance and more than a little punch-drunk, she fell down to the sand and dragged Max down with her. "You did it," she said again. She pressed her face to the crook of Max's neck, breathing hot and humid against her skin. "Holy shit, Max. You saved everybody."

Max disentangled from Chloe's embrace enough to prop herself in the sand, then took a moment to look around in wonder. "You," she finally declared, in a faint voice. "I saved _you_."

"And Arcadia Bay, and Rachel, and probably even the fucking squirrels," Chloe added in a hurry.

Max shook her head, then turned to pull Chloe's beanie back onto her messy blue hair. "You're the only one that matters to me," she said, in a whisper.

Chloe wanted to laugh again but couldn't, struck dumb by the intensity of Max's expression. This week had been hella insane, but that _look_ was new. She shook her head and made an odd coughing noise, fending off the notion that she'd had anything at all to do with Max and the unraveling of time and space. "You must have done some serious jumping around to pull off that shit," she said, to deflect the intense feelings coming at her right then. "Do you remember what happened?"

That was an excellent question. Max focused on some far off point, trying to decode the jumble of recollections crowded together, overlapping and fading away. "Not all of it," Max admitted. "That's... probably a good thing." She shuddered a bit to loosen the vague, dimming impressions of awful, awful things. 

"Dude, you were crazy powerful," Chloe said reverently. "Like, _commanding_ the storm. It was insane."

Max lifted a hand, idly flexing her fingers and unsurprised to find that they could no longer grasp at the threads of time she'd pulled, broken, and rewoven. "It's gone now," she murmured. "I can't rewind anymore."

Chloe looked just a little sick. "Shit, dude. I'm sorry."

"Why?" Max asked, genuinely puzzled. "I only needed it for you." She reached out and patted Chloe down again. "Just don't... _die_ , anymore. Okay?"

"Okay," Chloe promised, with a faintly hysterical giggle. She swiped at the tears that had escaped her eyes, then sprawled out hard in the sand, looking up at the last of the clouds leaving the darkening sky. Max huddled next to her, and she could feel the warmth bleeding through their respective rain-soaked clothes.

"Is Rachel okay?" Max asked after a few minutes.

"Yeah," Chloe replied, with a sniffle. "She's a convert to the Max Caulfield Fan Club, in case you were wondering." She looked sideways at Max, trying to gauge her reaction. "She said you saved her for me."

"I did," Max replied, sure and steady. "Whatever power I had, I used it for you," she continued. "I'd do it again and again." She scrunched her face in a pensive smile. "Actually, I think that's kinda exactly what happened."

With a queasy kind of worry tugging at her gut, Chloe sat up beside her, heedless of the sand stuck absolutely everywhere. "Why?" she asked, her voice faint and rough.

"Because you deserve it, even though you don't think you do," Max replied. "Because some version of you would have died in that bathroom to protect this goddamned town. And... because I love you," she concluded, with a furtive glance and a blush, aware that even though some version of Max Caulfield had said those words countless times in the past week, _she_ had never said them _here_.

A long moment passed while Chloe tried to remember how to breathe. "Holy shit, Max," she finally croaked. "How am I supposed to even..." She tugged off her beanie again and scrubbed through her hair with shaking fingers. "What do I... _shit_."

Max smiled and patted Chloe's knee. "Just believe me. Just love me back."

"I do," Chloe said immediately. "And I _do_. God, Max."

Max leaned over, tilting her forehead against Chloe's. "Wowser," she whispered, knowing that it would make Chloe laugh.

Chloe _did_ laugh, then promptly started crying, then sobbed and grabbed fistfuls of Max's clothing to pull her closer, then sobbed some more.

It had, as she pointed out between the subsequent messy bouts of snot and tears, been a _long_ fucking week.

They sat on the beach together until well past midnight, until the Saturday morning Max wasn't sure they'd ever see together. At some point, under the stars, they shared a second-in-this-reality kiss, then another, and another, until Max no longer had to worry about keeping count.

* * *

October 21st, 2016.

The unkempt frenchman in the dark, puffy sweater took a thoughtful drag off his cigarette when Max asked if she could take his photograph.

"Yes," he agreed after a moment. "I will make an attractive picture."

Chloe snorted out a laugh which she tried to cover by clearing her throat. She wandered away before she ruined Max's shot.

Max crouched to get the best framing, confident and practiced as she snapped the photo. When the image developed, she showed it to the frenchman, who nodded approvingly. He then turned his head upward, to the Eiffel Tower looming above them. "You know, sometimes I like to come here and just... look."

Max grinned, and followed his gaze just as the top of the hour struck and the tower erupted in a brilliant, choreographed light show. She felt Chloe appear once again at her side, and reached on instinct to lace their fingers together.

"Damn, dude," Chloe whispered. Max could only squeeze her hand in agreement.

Later that night, in possibly the smallest, dingiest hotel room on the Seine, Chloe flopped on the tiny bed next to Max. "Good vacation?" she asked.

" _Best_ vacation," Max declared, as she flipped through her photos and sorted them by composition and theme.

Chloe smiled lazily and watched her for a bit, then reached out to tuck a stray lock of Max's hair behind her ear. She let her fingertip glide across the pale, but still-prominent scar at Max's temple. It had been years since those fateful storms, and the surreal events following Max's surgery, but every once in a while Chloe made a point to remind herself, to keep the corresponding sense of fragility fresh and poignant in her mind. It was important to remember, like her own version of taking a picture.

"Hey, do you ever wonder about those other versions of us?" she asked. "Like, do you think they're doing okay?" 

"Uh. Yeah, I think they're okay," Max said, quietly. She set her photos aside with a sigh, feeling Chloe's curious gaze on her profile. "I can see them, sometimes. In the camera."

"No shit?" Chloe breathed, oddly reverent.

"Yeah," Max said. She closed her eyes, easily drawing to mind the figures that tended to hover on the edges of the viewfinder. One tall, with vibrant hair, one shorter. The figures weren't distinct, weren't in focus, but they were always together.

Every once in a while, there was a third nearby, with a flash of blue at her ear.

"I hope they got to go to Paris," Chloe murmured, accepting her answer without further question. "I hope they get married and live happily ever after. All that shit."

Max bumped against her shoulder with a fond smile. "Sap," she said mildly.

"I mean, I hope that stuff for _us_ , too," Chloe added, almost casually.

Max felt her heart seize up, then pound wildly in her chest. "You wanna marry me?"

"Yeah," Chloe replied, in a faint whisper. "Wanna marry me back?"

"Yeah," Max said, with a laugh, then a sob, as she threw her arms around Chloe's neck to pull her in for a kiss.

Later, Chloe would produce a ring she'd been carrying around for months, and there would tearful, happy calls to their families. 

Later still, at a ceremony on the beach at sunset, Max would feel summer-warm sand between her toes as she recited her vows, and would marvel at the vivid blue butterfly that wandered by as if to offer a benediction.

She yearned briefly for her camera, but settled instead for silently wishing "happily ever after" to her counterpart in another place and time. As she turned to smile at Chloe, the butterfly dipped in its flight, then seemed to fold inward until it disappeared.

She was pretty sure she heard a gentle, "You, too," cast her way upon the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
